For the past four years, Dartmouth College students with an interest in education have spent their winter off-terms teaching in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. Through this program, and a similar program involving recent Dartmouth graduates, aspiring teachers have gained first-hand teaching experience and a look into another culture.
David Anderson '04, who participated in the program during the winter of 2003, said, "The Marshall Islands offered something that I couldn't find anywhere else: the opportunity to help and to teach in really challenging and intimate situations within the context of a really incredible multicultural paradise."
Education professor Andrew Garrod created the "mentored internship" program with two major goals in mind: to provide meaningful teaching experience for interested students and graduates, and to help a country with an ailing education system. "The truth is the [Marshallese] schools are years behind their American counterparts," he said.
The undergraduate program consists of six to seven interns who teach at the local high school on Majuro Atoll, the capital of the Marshall Islands. The focus of the program is on teaching English, although past interns have taught a number of different subjects including science, math, government and social studies.
For the past three years, Garrod has also coordinated a teaching program for recent Dartmouth graduates. The focus of this program is slightly different, as graduates are dispatched to the "out islands" of Kili, Ejit, Wotje and Enewetok. These more remote islands have much less developed school systems than the more populated island of Majuro, and residents have had little contact with English speakers.
"It's a very different experience being on an outer island than one of the main islands," said Garrod.
Dartmouth interns have been well-received by the Marshallese. Garrod said, "The schools are absolutely thrilled to have them. We have a very good reputation with the [Secretary] of Education [Biram Stege]." According to Garrod, Stege attributes significant improvements in Ejit's elementary school directly to the work of Dartmouth graduates.
Interns themselves have found that the program has had a profound effect on both their teaching skills and their world perspectives.
Anderson said, of the experience, "It just obliterates your former sense of perspective. Through our immersion in their culture, I think that we also began to question the primacy of our own."
According to Rachel Baker '04, her participation in the Marshall Islands program in the winter of 2003 was a determining factor in her decision to pursue a career in teaching. "I think that I will use my experiences there to shape what kind of teacher I am. I have experience in a pretty rough situation, which I think will make some parts of teaching in the United States a piece of cake. I have also experienced teaching in a very strong and small community, which I will hopefully bring into my work here," she said.
Members of the first undergraduate programs have gone on to become teachers and have brought their experiences in the Marshall Islands to their classrooms in the United States.
Jessica Souke '01, an English teacher at Mascoma Valley Regional High School in Enfield, N.H., frequently invokes her experiences in the Marshall Islands during her classes.
"These anecdotes always lead to numerous questions from my students, and then I am thrilled because I exposed them to something new. This is one of my favorite parts of teaching," she said.
A teacher at Marion Cross School in Norwich, Vt., Meredith Kessler '01 found the transition from third-world to first-world education to be somewhat shocking. She said, "I spent the first several days [at Marion Cross School] counting bottles of glue, stacks of construction paper, globes, totally in awe of the amount of 'stuff' in the classroom."
Kessler sees the Marshall Islands program as inextricably linked with her teaching. She said, "My experiences in the Marshalls and in other places enrich and inform my teaching on a daily basis because those are the experiences that make me who I am. It's impossible to separate personal experience from my teaching."
Kessler will return to the Marshall Islands next year as the Field Coordinator for future Dartmouth trips to the country.
