MAJURO — Struggling schools around the Marshall Islands will get a boost from the arrival next month of more than 25 American teachers from the Harvard University-based WorldTeach program.
The American teachers will be distributed to public elementary and high schools around the Marshall Islands in an effort to boost academic performance among students who lag behind most of their neighbors in the Micronesian sub-region.
The volunteer program recruits graduates of top-flight universities in the U.S., and the group coming to Majuro includes graduates of Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, Wellesley, Notre Dame and other major universities in the U.S., Helen Claire Sievers, executive director of WorldTeach, said.
Sievers has long been associated with the Marshall Islands prior to taking her post with the Massachusetts-based educational organization, having formerly managed a private school and the government’s hospital on Ebeye, the second major urban center in the Marshall Islands that is adjacent to the Kwajalein missile testing range.
Minister of Education Wilfred I. Kendall and Secretary Biram Stege have been working with Seivers since last year to organize the new program. Kendall indicated that the Ministry has signed an agreement with WorldTeach to provide teachers for a three year period.
Sievers was in town this week to work out details for the program that is planting roots in the Marshall Islands for the first time after working in many other developing nations.
WorldTeach field director Alexis Miesen is now working at the Ministry of Education to coordinate the program in anticipation of the arrival of the large group of teachers on July 23, one month before the next school year begins.
WorldTeach will run a one-month language and cultural orientation for the new volunteers before they are assigned to different schools. There will be a heavy emphasis on learning Marshallese language to assist the volunteers who are stationed on remote outer islands, Sievers said.
Some of the American teachers who are coming are fresh out of college, while others who graduated years ago are either in mid-career or at the retirement stage.
“All of the volunteers are teachers, but many have other talents, too,” said Sievers. She said that among the skills of people in the group of more than 25 teachers arriving on July 23 is drama, video documentary production and fisheries management.
“We recruit in the 30 top colleges in the United States,” Sievers said.
WorldTeach was launched by a Harvard University student aimed at providing volunteer American teachers to African countries.
At any one time, the organization has provided American teachers to as many as 20 developing nations. During the 1990s, it provided teachers to a number of Eastern European nations following the break up of the Soviet Union.
“We stay as long as we’re needed,” said Sievers. “Now, we’re working in five countries.”
The program is affiliated with the Center for International Development at Harvard.
