Empowering women through education

As many of you know, I’m teaching in the Access Academy, the pre-college prep program at the Asian University for Women. The classes I teach include a two-hour reading and writing (R&W) class (picture), and two, one-hour grammar sections. My students come from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. During the first week, I assigned a short story, the “American Odyssey,” to R&W and asked students to write a journal entry on their odyssey from their home country to AUW (and I thought my total air time was long!). One student traveled for two days on the train to get to Chittagong; and, for a few it was their first time riding a train.... I respect their courage and the sacrifices they made to come to AUW.
For week 2, I gave my students “The Men We Carry in our Minds” and we discussed differences between men and women, and between educated and uneducated persons. The first time I learned about Islam was during high school when I wrote a paper on women and Islam. Since then I learned a thing or two about Islamic traditions, culture, and practices, but this was perhaps the second or third time I came to learn first-hand, young women’s feelings about their positions and attitudes in life. I posed the question, “Would you rather be a man or woman?” A couple of students would choose to be men because of their status, privilege, and power in society. “We must be the change we wish to see,” said Gandhi. Asian University for Women students are changing and will change this world! Some of my students’ life goals include:
“My future goal is [I] want to be a social leader in my Tamil community. I’ve plans to take [a] documentary in the future.”
“My future goal is to become a rich, successful engineer and to help the government in my country [Afghanistan] to create new ideas for helping the poor.”