The first-grade class was sitting on the floor, learning the alphabet, writing their first letters on the floor. In Fushë Kosovë, for example, the situation was catastrophic. Those rooms would heat up quickly and get cold quickly. Then it would happen that to get to the classroom, one had to pass through the kitchen or hallway. The idea for home-schools was given by Halim Hyseni. I remember a journalist once told him, ‘What are you going to do there? They cook beans in that room,’ I’m simplifying here, ‘The meal is cooked there, students study there?’ Halim replied, ‘Then you tell me, where else should the students go to learn? Show me a place where food isn’t cooked and we’ll send them there.’
Bajram Shatri was born in 1946 in the village of Tomoc, Municipality of Istog. He graduated from the Department of Pedagogy at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Prishtina. He worked at the Pedagogical Institute of Kosovo as an advisor for planning and analysis. For three years, he served as Secretary of the Central Council of Financing of the parallel education system in Kosovo during the 1990s. From 1997 to 1999, he was the director of the publishing house Libri Shkollor in Prishtina. He is now retired and lives with his family in Prishtina.