Happy New Year and best wishes to you all!

Here our top 9 photos of 2017 on Instagram - from Yangon, Mandalay, Bagan, and around Rakhine State, Myanmar.

Gauging the atmosphere and feeling of the young teachers is a fine art.

Every year, America settles down for a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving. This year, one of our former students, Thein Min Swe, had the privilege and pleasure to find himself in the US during this most festive time of year. Now at Harvard, pursuing a Master of Public Health, we caught up with him one Sunday afternoon to learn how he's doing.

Our teacher trainees are realizing that learning is not just what happens in the classroom. It's important that we build a stronger community and help each other out. This weekend, we joined the students in cleaning the monastery compound.

When our teacher trainee proposed some ideas to improve student learning, one local teacher said, “Wait, wait, wait." He thinks our trainee is always in a hurry to do things, but our trainee believes without encouraging others, things won't change.

I heard a student whisper, “Our teacher is coming.” One curiously looked back at the doorway and unexpectedly saw me. It's been about 2 months since we left the village due to the conflict in northern Rakhine State, but now are glad to be back.

We recently taught in two communities in northern and southern Rakhine State, and can now reflect how much we were able to meet the local needs and expectations.

When we talk about the teachers we've had, our teacher trainee said he didn't really like any of his teachers, and Chloe mentioned we were lucky if we found one or two!

In Myanmar schools, there is an integrated triangular symbol that represents the involvement of teachers, parents and students. The intention is that students, parents and teachers all need to equally work together to create a quality education system.