Teacher Absent Often: Building Sustainable Schools from the Inside Out

In early 2001, Kari Grady Grossman and her husband adopted a little boy from Cambodia, and in turn adopted his country, discovering a personal connection to a little known and long-suffering people. Feeling the need to give back to the beautiful, struggling country of their son’s birth, they decided to have a school built in his honor in the rural countryside. But the building was just the beginning.

“Teacher Absent Often” is a frequent phrase uttered by students and their parents to describe the dismal state of Cambodia’s education system. In Teacher Absent Often (Youth Edition), Kari weaves fascinating stories of learning to empower one poor, marginalized, illiterate community to sustain a school for their children. She reveals something every developed world do-gooder should know—how to help people in the way they want to be helped, not the way we think they should be helped. To read Teacher Absent Often is to feel the call to action.