S.D., AFGHAN STUDENTS CONNECT OVER ZOOM

Virtual meetings between Carmel Valley classroom, learning center in Kabul

BY KRISTEN TAKETA

On a recent Thursday night after 8 p.m., two San Diego high school girls taught a lesson about DNA to a class of girls and boys in Afghanistan, a country that does not allow girls their age to attend school. The exchange was happening through Zoom, from a classroom at Canyon Crest Academy in wealthy Carmel Valley all the way to Mawoud Learning Academy a private education center in Kabul.

Pictured on Canyon Crest’s Zoom screen were faces of more than two dozen Afghan teenagers, mostly girls, sitting on wooden benches in a sun-filled room at Ma-

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The snowboarding gold medalist says he’s retiring from the sport after the Beijing Games. D1 woud. Their eyes smiled behind blue and black surgical masks whenever Canyon Crest seniors, Aditi Anand and April Zuo, laughed or made jokes during the lesson. Closest to the camera their teacher Najibullah Yousefi smiled as he translated for his students. Anand and Zuo explained that dish soap can be used to help extract DNA, because its hydrophobic properties break down membranes surrounding the inner parts of a cell, including DNA.

“I think we catch it,” Yousefi said. “That soap caused the membrane of the cell, the cell membrane, away from the water.”

“Yes, wonderful!” Zuo said, and around her more than two dozen Canyon Crest students broke into applause at the understanding that bridged the two cultures on opposite sides of the world

Since last April students at

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