It’s a new school year, and Sister Julia makes ends meet in East Timor.

A new school year for most students means classrooms filled with teachers and spanking new textbooks. Not so in East Timor, where a shortage of fully trained classroom teachers may mean more class time this year for Maryknoll Sister Julia Shideler.

She’s up to the test. Recently, Sister Julia coached 39 Timorese students for the national English exam. They all passed.

For most children in East Timor, though, it’s hard to learn. They have few textbooks, their teachers need training in Portuguese, and electricity in schools can still be a rarity.

“Students usually learn by copying whatever is on the blackboard, since they don’t have any textbooks of their own,” said Sister Julia, who has roots in California and Washington in the United States. She teaches full-time at a public high school in Aileu, a small city near the northern coast of this Southeast Asian island the country shares with Indonesia.  

Timorese students see a mentor in Maryknoll Sr. Julia Shideler (second from r).

“We can’t even imagine the luxuries of a school library, projectors, televisions, filmstrips, or audiotapes,” Sister Julia said.

Instead, she’s helping teachers and students make do with what they have. Sister Julia even volunteered to take a government course for East Timor-born teachers so she could learn Portuguese, which became a national language when the country formally won independence from Indonesia in the last decade.  

Schools here are also benefiting from a new teacher’s manual Sister Julia helped write last year. The public high school doesn’t yet have a new curriculum or textbooks, so Sister Julia was responding to a great need.  “It was a little work of love, but it felt good to finally finish it.”

That’s because in just a few short weeks, Timorese schoolchildren begin a new term. They and Sister Julia need your prayers and more. Through the gift of education, dozens of Maryknoll Sisters work tirelessly to open minds and souls that you nurture when you donate what you can.

The needs of East Timor’s schools are many. At Sister Julia’s school, the incoming class will number some 240 students. There are just three classrooms in the school for them. You can do the math. 

While a typical classroom at Sister Julia’s school can only fit 40 students, this year, it will now have to house double that.  “That’s what I face when I get back, though I’m hopeful they will hire someone to help me,” Sister Julia said.

“Otherwise, the poor kids will only get an hour of English a week. Please pray for us.”