- Playing
- The ABC’s of education in Afghanistan
- From
- KALW
Marine reservist Nina D’Amato used to teach in East Palo Alto as part of Teach for America and served as assistant principal at AP Giannini Middle School in San Francisco. But more recently she worked in Afghanistan helping to build “tent schools” where there were none before. She coordinated education infrastructure development programs with the Afghan government in Helmand Province, an agrarian farm region, long-controlled by the Taliban, which has been a huge center for the opium trade. KALW’s Ben Trefny sat down with D’Amato and asked her what education looked like in Helmand before the Marines got there.
More from KALW
Anna Halprin and the Planetary Dance
(00:08:42)
From: KALW
Anna Halprin has influenced generations of dancers and artists with her unique integration of dance and healing work, as well as her use of performance to explore social ...
Could bail reform bail out California’s overcrowded jails?
(00:06:33)
From: KALW
Legally, bail has only one purpose: to guarantee that people show up for their court dates. Bail amounts are set by panels of judges in each county and they vary widely. ...
Decoding the mysteries of Bay Area traffic
(00:06:52)
From: KALW
If you added up all of the time that all of us spend stuck in Bay Area traffic, it would average out to about 40 million hours a year. It doesn’t take much to slow down ...
Bobby Hutcherson: Master of the vibes
(00:14:07)
From: KALW
For nearly 50 years now, a jazz artist who now resides in Northern California has enjoyed a career as one of the great performers on the vibraphone, commonly called the ...
Potential cuts to Cal Grants trigger protest
(00:06:00)
From: KALW
If Governor Jerry Brown’s tax reform plan passes this November, CSU admissions may not suffer cuts, but state financial aid is still in danger. Governor Brown has suggested a ...
Undocumented students wait for DREAM Act to become a reality
(00:06:35)
From: KALW
AB540 is a state law that enables undocumented students who have attended California high schools for three or more years to pay in-state tuition at a public college or ...
San Francisco fights to keep the ocean at bay
(00:07:14)
From: KALW
The only thing more powerful than human will is Mother Nature. At San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, the two forces have done battle for years over wave erosion, but only the city ...
BART police meet the Citizen Review Board
(00:08:08)
From: KALW
A civilian oversight board is now responsible for hearing a wide range of alleged BART police misconduct at their meetings every month. With the help of a new, independent ...
The cost of recycling scavengers
(00:04:46)
From: KALW
San Francisco is considered a national leader in pro-environmental policy, advocacy, and education. And while the City is a pioneer in recycling it may be getting tougher on ...
Bowling alley acts like community center in Daly City
(00:07:08)
From: KALW
The neighborhood of Westborough straddles the border between Daly City and South San Francisco. It’s a mostly residential area, with quiet sloping streets full of brown and ...
Related Pieces
Broadcast History
KALW 91.7FM:
May 31, 2011
Transcript
NINA D’AMATO: Previously, they had leftover curriculum from the Soviets, which had all sorts of strange pictures in it – how to recognize a Soviet soldier, what an AK47 looks like…
BEN TREFNY: Seriously.
D’AMATO: Oh yeah. That curriculum was still leftover. They had Taliban curriculum in some places, which was just the Koran, reprinted. That was still leftover.
TREFNY: So these are in these schools just on shelves – like, “Hey, we need to get this worksheet for somebody, let’s just grab the one with the pictures of the AK47.”
D’AMATO: That’s right. And we’ll develop literacy around that. So, all of that had to be … we had to have discussions with the community, and once the community understood that what really needed to be taught to their kids was basic alphabet, how to develop sentences and basic paragraph structure to make these people literate – they embraced that immediately.
Related Website
