All Is Well That Begins Well

There are no data, no numbers on a page, to prove that hiring English-speaking teachers can vastly improve a Pacific Island student's chance at a successful life. But the opinion of senior educators - in the Marshall Islands at least - is unanimous: Bring on the American graduates and undergraduates so that our children can learn to speak, read and write in what is the international language.

Marshall Islands High School student Cutty Wase plays Puck in Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ directed by Dartmouth College’s Professor Andrew Garrod. Photo: Karen Earnshaw

While various church groups have long been sending teachers to their schools in the Marshalls, the public school system has struggled with English in the classroom. For a number of decades, the U.S. Peace Corps filled this void, but that organization pulled out of the Marshall Islands in the early 1990s.

Enter Professor Andrew Garrod of Dartmouth College, an elite U.S. liberal arts college, who in 2001 spearheaded a program to place six undergraduate student teachers at the Marshall Islands High School (MIHS) for a semester. In the current academic year, the program has expanded to include 17 young Americans working in schools in Majuro, the national capital, and on outer islands.

The year after Dartmouth teachers debuted in Marshall Islands classrooms, the Harvard-based program WorldTeach also did a deal with the Marshalls government and sent a group of graduates. This program, too, has expanded with 25 young teachers working in the Marshall Islands in the current academic year and 29 scheduled to begin work in August.

Why are English-speaking teachers so vital? Without English, a man on an outer island can't read his Honda manual so that he can fix his outboard motor, a woman can't read the directions on a medicine bottle. In Majuro, which has high unemployment, English-speakers have a much higher chance of finding a job. They can understand the movies at the cinema, read the local newspaper, sing along with the latest music. More importantly, if they decide to take advantage of their visa-free access to America, with English they will be able find employment rather than end up on welfare.

The graduates who come earn only a small stipend and in some cases even pay their own airfare to get here. So why do they come?

"It gives them the opportunity to try their hand at teaching in a remarkably different, but safe, environment," says Garrod. "It takes them out of their comfort zone in the U.S. and forces them to confront their ideas about teaching children and the connection between having an education and then getting a job."

Each year Garrod pays a visit to the Marshalls to monitor how his teachers are faring. This year, however, the professor was here for longer than normal so that he could direct the William Shakespeare play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Marshall Islands High School. On hearing of this project, many skeptics said Garrod was aiming far too high. The result-a highly entertaining and professional production-proved them wrong and everyone from the U.S. Ambassador Greta Morris to the youngest audience member agreed that the bilingual performance was a hit.

In the show's program, Garrod wrote: "The commitment to produce the play springs out of a desire to honor both the splendor of Shakespeare's late 16th century language and the vitality of the modern Marshallese language. Our other aim is to help students see that as master of both languages their lives will be immeasurably enriched."

Enriched is also a fitting word for how many of the volunteer teachers feel after working in the Marshalls for a while. Patrick Lane, for example, came to the Marshalls with the first WorldTeach group and taught on the remote atoll of Ujae, which has a population of about 450 people. "When I first arrived the kids had some limited, basic English conversational skills, but next to zero reading skills. I can't say that there was an amazing increase in their English levels in my time there, but conversationally they had certainly improved.

Marshall Islands High School students Tracy Rounds as Hermia and Yolalyn Mares as Helena were among a cast of students who wowed audiences with their performances in Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Photo: Karen Earnshaw

"The Dartmouth and WorldTeach programs are not going to be the silver bullet, the cure-all, that's going to fix all that's wrong with education in the Marshalls, but they're definitely helping."

After working as a teacher for a year, Lane stayed on in the Marshall Islands as the program's field director and has signed up for a third year beginning in August. "I do get the impression that the schools are improving.

"There are new teachers coming into the system after graduating from CMI (the College of the Marshall Islands) and older Marshallese teachers are coming in from the outer islands to do summer courses at the college.

"And it's not just the teaching that's improving - the school buildings are too. Under the new Compact (of Free Association with the U.S.), they'll be able to fix buildings and get new textbooks. Plus the Ministry (of Education) has just won a huge 'teacher quality' grant that will make a big difference."

And then, of course, there's the difference the volunteer teachers are making. Not that this comes for free.

"Basically each WorldTeach teacher costs $10,000," says Lane. "This means that for about $250,000 they're getting 25 English-speaking teachers. If the RMI were to go and hire 25 American teachers it would cost them at least twice as much."

And for the Marshalls even this cool quarter of a million is not too big a burden to bear, because the cost is being borne by the Republic of China (Taiwan), which is keen to spend their diplomacy dollars on worthy projects such as education.

WorldTeach's contract with the Marshall Islands is for three years, but Lane is confident the program will continue: "The key in any new project is a long-term commitment and a willingness to follow through."