Six Dartmouth students and one Hanover High School student returned March 18 from the underdeveloped Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands, where they spent 11 weeks teaching middle school and high school students. This was the first year the program, which was run by the education department and the Tucker Foundation, has taken place.
Participants viewed the program as an important offering by the department, which is currently undergoing a formal review by an external committee and has been closely scrutinized in the past.
The Marshall Islands are a group of 34 islands and ring-shaped coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean, midway between Hawaii and Australia. The students worked in the sole public middle school and high school on the capital island of Majuro, a half-mile wide, 26-mile long atoll home to 27,000 people.
The six Dartmouth participants were Diandra Benally '00, Michael Holmes '01, Kelly Hsieh '01, Meredith Kessler '01, Jessica Souke '01, Matthew Shaffer '01 and Mara Tieken '01. Also participating was Hanover High senior Schaefer White. Leading the group were Dartmouth elementary education lecturer Allison Rowe and her husband Nick Rowe, a teacher at Souhegan High School.
Kessler, who taught 87 students in four classes, described the experience as "total immersion" in an unfamiliar culture.
Many students in the Marshall Islands have a poor working knowledge of English. Even though the curriculum calls for all classes to be taught in English beginning in kindergarten, most teachers there are recent high school graduates and often have not mastered English themselves, so they often end up teaching classes in their native language, Marshallese.
Both Kessler and Jessica Souke '01 described the experience as often being more about learning than about teaching. "Eventually we realized that it was, 'You're gonna learn more from the kids than they're gonna learn from you,'" Kessler said.
Souke taught high school math classes, and she spoke of using math as a "common language" to help bridge the cultural gap between her and her students, but said that she needed to be resourceful as a teacher when classes were overflowing and school supplies were lacking.
The interns went through a series of training sessions throughout Fall term to condition them to Marshallese culture, but Kessler and Souke both stressed that their arrival there was a shock. "None of the preparation in the world could prepare you," Souke said.
Participants have been chosen for next year's program, and its organizers are seeking to secure funding for it in the future.
Souke said the program's value lay in providing opportunities to extend learning beyond what she had already learned in the classroom at Dartmouth.
"There's no other experience I've had at Dartmouth where I've gotten to apply what I've learned like I did there."
This term, the seven participants are doing an independent study program for Education 85 credit, for which they have been preparing a group portfolio of their experiences, individually writing papers, and presenting their experiences to American middle schools and high schools.
