For as long as I can remember I have wanted to
be a teacher. Everything about being a teacher fascinated me. Even the prospect of having mounds and mounds
of papers to grade using my red pen excited me. In college I studied Elementary
Education and loved every bit of it. I loved creating thematic units and file
folder games, making up songs to go with lessons and reading children’s books.
While attending university I started coming into
contact with all sorts of people who had connections to Africa. I became
enchanted by the mystery of this huge continent that was so vastly different
from any other place I had visited. I wanted to see if this image I had in my
head of Africa was at all close to reality. So, after I graduated, I hoped on a
plane and moved to Africa. I spent six months living in Zambia and Botswana
with an international nonprofit called Youth With A Mission (YWAM). I’ve never
met a person who has visited Africa and not wanted to return immediately. You get sucked in to the carefree, upbeat,
colorful life that exists there. I left Africa sure I would return soon.
Once back in the United States, I taught for a
year in a charter school in downtown Kansas City. I have never felt more out of
my comfort zone. I had to walk through a metal detector to get into school each
day. It was an elementary school! I did not know how to connect with these
students whose lives were so different from mine. It wasn’t just the violence
or heart breaking stories that challenged me as I taught in that school. I
quickly realized that there were huge holes in their knowledge and skills. I
once asked them to point to the United States on a map and was shocked to find
out that in a group of 30 fourth graders only two were able to identify the
U.S. accurately. It was teaching in this school that I was confronted with the
fact that the American education system in some ways isn’t working- plain and simple.
I realized, in today’s world there is more than just curriculum and teachers needed
in a school. My students were dealing with things at home and in the community
that I as an adult would have a difficult time processing and coping with. I
spent a major part of every class dealing with the side effects of these
issues: disruptive and violent behavior, lack of motivation, low self-esteem,
and anger. I realized that education is not isolated, for the outside world
leaves an undeniable footprint on each child that walks through the classroom
door.
My love for Africa did not fade during the year
and a half I lived in the U.S. and in January of 2009 I moved to Tanzania. I
joined staff with the YWAM base in Kilimanjaro. I primarily taught English at
the Elementary school level. At times I had the opportunity to lead professional
development seminars on topics such as multiple intelligences, fostering
student-teacher relationships, and creative teaching methods. I was able to
propose and implement several new initiatives to foster academic growth
school-wide. Some of the programs failed, and I was forced to admit they would
not work in this context, but some of the programs flourished.
Each year I used to teach a unit on occupations.
I would open the unit by asking each student to draw a picture of the
occupation they wanted to have when they grew up. No surprise, most drew
pictures of the occupations they saw around them: teachers, drivers, and
shopkeepers. There was barely any variety. Then we started learning about other
occupations, even ones that are not common in Tanzania like photographers,
fishermen, and judges. When I asked my students to complete the assignment
again at the end of the unit nearly every student picked a different
occupation. This is why I love education. The more people know and discover
about the world the more they are able to dream of what they want their own
life and community to become.
I have come to University of Pennsylvania to
study International Educational Development. My goal is to help build schools
in West Africa because I want to give young people the opportunity to learn
what is possible and even more how to dream of the impossible. By showing
individuals at a young age the possibilities and giving them some of the basic
skills I believe they will be the
ones to foster development. They will foster the type of development that they
want not our Western definition of development. What I learned in the five
years I was teaching is that no one system will work for everyone. America’s
system has gaps, and struggles to meet the needs of many. Why would I want to
take that system and transfer it to another nation? I saw positive aspects of
Tanzanian education that I would like to add to my “toolbox” and use in the
future. This program will allow me to study other nations’ systems and in turn I
hope to gain even more tools.
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