and finally a New Jersey teacher is making an impact on the lives of students thousands of miles away Seth Holm from the Hun School in Princeton created a class for young girls and women in Afghanistan to learn English virtually and in secret for many this class is their only safe space to connect with the outside world under Taliban rural education for women is strictly forbidden even accessing this course remotely can put their lives and their families at risk but it's one the Afghan women say they're willing to take Seth home who leads the course joins me now Dr Holm this started as a four-week course it's now obviously gone on for several months where did the idea come from so my student zakara came from Afghanistan here at the end of last year and towards the end of the year she expressed interest in creating an online English class for girls who are still in Afghanistan she needed some help with the curriculum and I would said I would be delighted to help she and a friend of hers from the dorm here at the Han school put together a roster they put out a call on social media got about 250 responses from girls in Afghanistan in about two days and they weave that down to about 20 students who we could support financially through uh money that we raised through a GoFundMe for internet costs and things like that we started the class in with the intention of just having it be four weeks but uh it was so much fun and so important to everyone involved that we just decided to keep it going paint for me what this virtual class looked like I'm picturing a black screen no faces given the risk that's posed here it is largely that I mean if you were to come and take a picture of what our class looks like it would look like me sitting in my classroom in the middle of the night after everyone has gone to bed in the dorms it meets on Thursday nights which is Friday mornings for them uh it goes until usually around 1am the pictures on the screens some of them have their faces shown on an image some of them just have other images up but mostly it's just the names but largely that's because the internet doesn't support video well enough for them to participate in the class effectively when they're showing their cameras these are girls and women who were born largely while the Taliban was not in rural while the military presence from the U.S was there what is their life like now and what are they seeking to get through this besides an education you know that's a really important question and it's it's come to me slowly that English is very important for them to learn but education in general when they grew up in a in a world that provided them with educational opportunities and those educational opportunities are taken away and there's no promise of them returning along with the loss of Education comes a real loss of identity and a real loss of a sense of value and so the opportunity to continue their education even in some small respect really gives them a sense of themselves back what's your Hope from here Dr Holm does the class end now after a couple of months are you hoping to continue this going with a new cohort it was about three weeks into the class when we were slotted to end in a week and one of the students said very poignantly she said please don't leave us and at that time I said I'll never will if I can help it I'll stay with you forever because I was feeling exactly what she was feeling the reward that I get from teaching that class on Thursday nights the feeling when I close my computer at 1am and I'm headed back to my apartment to go to sleep is like nothing I've experienced before it's a tremendous gratitude just being in the presence of the strength and determination of those young women is like sunlight it's an it's an incredible feeling and I I moved to tears about half of the time after after I end the class and so it's not something that I want to live without at this point well we wish you good luck in keeping that going thanks so much for sharing that Insight with us Dr Seth Holm with the Hun School in Princeton thank you so much for having me [Music]