Writing with Young Afghan Women

A remote volunteer teaching opportunity and adding more things to a full plate

I’ve had a sabbatical from my teaching job this semester, and during that time, I’ve been writing, and I’ve also been running a free writing class for young women in Afghanistan through an amazing organization called Afghan Female Student Outreach.

Afghan Female Student Outreach recruits students from all provinces of Afghanistan for credit-bearing and non-credit university seminars, taught remotely in real time, in English language learning; quantitative sciences, engineering & architecture; life sciences & health; social sciences; history and philosophy; literature; and the arts.

I was initially nervous about this, but excited about the challenge. The organization just started last year, has been covered in the Chronicle of Higher Education and elsewhere, and now has nonprofit status. It was launched by Lucy Ferriss, Writer in Residence, Emerita, at Trinity College in CT, in response to the fact that girls have been banned by the Taliban from access to education in Afghanistan (“Afghan Women No Longer Allowed to Attend University,” Le Monde, Dec. 23, 2022).

The basic idea of AFSO is that a professor can volunteer to teach a class through a Moodle-based platform with Google Meet or Zoom meetings. The students are facing incredible challenges, of course, so part of the job is being flexible about attendance, knowing that family crises and lack of electricity and other challenges might hinder the students from always attending, and that spotty wifi usually means they can’t have their cameras on. There are also extra security measures that need to be taken to make sure the girls’ identities are protected.

(The Alt Text is doing weird things; photo is of a girl in a blue burqua sitting on a stuccoed wall outside with blue sky in the background and the text, “Live Remote Classes in University Subjects and English Language” with the AFSO logo in bottom right corner with image of a girl with long hair, a microphone, and a university graduation cap)

My class ran from mid-February to mid-March, and it required a lot of planning and a lot of flexibility with the unknowns to imagine online classes for a wide range of English-language learners, some of whom have home and community lives that are unpredictable and very stressful and cannot always make it to class (plus the time difference). I ended up creating a WhatsApp group for the students to communicate and also sent out weekly emails with links to recorded class sessions and readings. I worked with a volunteer TA that AFSO set me up with, who responded to some of the writing, and I responded to the rest. The students are eager for feedback and to work on revisions. I have learned so much and am eager to get into the next iteration of the class.

My class ended up being on "Writing Literary Portraits,” a concrete skill with short readings. What I didn’t really anticipate was the beautiful writing, the fierce commitment of this group of 12 students, the acute insight of these short descriptive pieces, and the sense of connection I feel to each of them. Without ever seeing their faces, I got to know each of them and will stay in touch with them. They use emojis with abandon during our class session, and they volunteer to read, and the most amazing part has been their willingness to share their writing with each other.

The other part is, of course, the joy of teaching nonfiction, and seeing the students grasp how powerful it is to notice and record the smallest of details about their lives, and the way in which these small details lend a great power in terms of capturing the texture and weight of a life. And there’s the beautiful thing about detail: once you understand and have felt why it matters, it works everywhere, in every kind of writing.

Another thing that was fascinating was that in teaching some of my favorite short pieces of descriptive nonfiction, including Sonja Livingston’s “Thumb-sucking Girl” and Dagoberto Gilb’s “Living Al Chuco” and Lily Dancyger’s gorgeous piece on portraits, “John Singer Sargent and Writing About Real People,” at The Word Cave. I had to make PowerPoints to explain the social context of these pieces: the reason why a family would have to live in a car in the U.S., the reason for the militarized U.S./Mexico border, and all the references that we as readers based in the U.S. understand as part of breathing this air and being here.

Their stories are unforgettable, and I’m planning on offering an expanded class in the fall, and am currently working on how to allow some of my Fairfield students to read and respond to this work while letting some of my Fairfield students share their writing with the Afghan students. Starting in the fall, they’ll be able to earn 1 college credit for my class through the Open Society University Network, with a class cap of 20 (and a few students fall away from that initial list due to challenges).

And yes, it will be a little more than I can comfortably handle, but there’s a magnet on the fridge at the goat farm (I’m watching the goats again for a bit) that reads, “Life Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone.”

Of course I am putting it out there: maybe you have time in your life now, or in the future, to get involved? I recommend this especially if you feel like you need a renewed sense of the power of teaching.

There’s a welcome event and info session that you can register for on April 21 at 12 pm Eastern Time. Just click on the RSVP and it will take you to a place where you can register for the event. "Why AFSO? An Hour with Our Students in Afghanistan." Lucy writes, “We'll include student presentations, faculty reflections, and an extensive Q&A for both students and faculty.”

If you have general questions I can answer, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll reply!