Teaching

The Peace Corps has three goals. The first is to help people in another country, the second is to promote a better understanding of Americans and the third goal is to promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Teaching is a way to check off each goal in a clean sweep. I gained something valuable from the Peace Corps experience: I have become more aware of the United States focus on business education. My experience is that more often than not, courses are taught in narrowly focused specific subjects rather than focusing the subject matter in a global perspective with a systems view.

Although there is usually a chapter in a text about the global environment, international courses are more often separate subjects when they should be integrated. There may be an inference to globalization, but no real information or exercises to help students learn what that really means. There are specific internationally focused degrees, but why? If we are to compete in a global environment, we can't think in global silos, but many times we teach students to think in silos. It's arrogant.

When I was teaching a course in Management Strategy, the text had a section on generational values. When we talked about this subject in class, the students were trying to bucket themselves in the American generational values. There was no qualification that the material is only relevant to one area of the world. I was stymied.

Although Saint Lucia is a westernized nation and some of the values fit, they have their own history which created their unique culture and generational values. The next few weeks I had them research and put their own generations into buckets.

For the first time, they began to think about the diversity they would face if they were to work in an American company. And, they began to recognize how their own value system can collide in the workplace here on this island. That exercise taught me as much about Saint Lucia as it taught them about American values. It was rewarding.

I teach Junior Achievement in the primary schools and none of the material is geared towards a global environment, although they have many customers in many countries. They have an exercise in making paper donuts when many children don't know what a donut is. They have stickers with American currency when children here only know the Eastern Caribbean Dollar. There is an exercise to elect a mayor, one of which supports a facility to take care of stray pets; neither of these things makes sense to the children in my village. It’s baffling.

The opportunities I have had to teach in a foreign country have helped me grow. I hope the tools I have passed on to them will help them in the years to come. I know the knowledge, culture, information and rich interaction they have shared with me will impact me for years to come.

When I think of teaching and how it connects with the goals of Peace Corps, I think I can easily check all three boxes.