Overseas Student Teaching

As Anatole France stated, "The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards." Is there anything more compelling for a teacher than a student's curiosity? For those of us with many years in the classroom, those moments when a student wants to know are marked with excitement, with what some teachers call a "teachable moment." Teachers know that when they can ignite curiosity, a student will seek to understand. The energy of wanting to know can overcome hesitation, doubt, comfort, and more, push to energize into action. Berlyne (1960) claimed that curiosity was the motivator for exploration. [1]

Paulo Freire argues that the basis of a critical classroom is for teachers to understand the primacy of curiosity. Before teachers can entertain methods or pedagogical approaches for an engaging classroom, "the teacher must be clear and content with the notion that the cornerstone of the whole process is human curiosity." [2]Curiosity drives us to question, states Freire, "and to know, act, ask again, recognize." [3] Curiosity, then, motivates us to not only want to know, but to reflect and to act upon that reflection. Curiosity moves us to action. "There could be no such thing as human existence without the openness of our being to the world . . . " and what more important disposition or quality can any teacher have, then but "openness to the world" through the portal of curiosity? [4]

For those of us who have committed ourselves to the education of new teachers, the task of fostering curiosity is complex. Many times we must reacquaint the adult student candidate with his/her curiosity, sometimes simmering longingly beneath the academic surface of the spirit or lying deeply dormant from years of schooling that taught the importance of "other people's questions" rather than one's own. "Banking education," the transmission of information by the teacher to passive students who receive and are expected to regurgitate that information is forming the backbone of No Child Left Behind initiatives, particularly for poor, working-class, and frequently, middle-class students. If and when these students reach college and choose teacher preparation, the invisible framework, powerful because it is a dominant experience, is this transmission model. The COST Program, with its opportunity to step into another culture as a teacher, ignites the curiosity of some of these students, and increases the potential of questioning this dominant experience.

Ohio University is an active member of the Consortium for Overseas Student Teaching (COST), an association that places education students in schools in foreign countries to fulfill student teaching requirements. Since 1973, the COST Program has collaboratively arranged student teaching experiences at receiving COST institutions in fifteen countries to develop the skills and dispositions associated with teaching, but in international settings. [5] Prospective teachers who apply to COST become engaged in potentially transformative experiences by working in a school in another country under the mentorship of a classroom cooperating teacher and a COST university supervisor.

COST students, by virtue of their curiosity and decision to teach overseas, tend to be independent and academically able, as well as desirous of a qualitatively different classroom and curricular experience than they would get if they did their student teaching in their local schools. The COST student expands her vision of herself as a professional, as well as gains greater sensitivity to other cultures. More significantly, the COST student is exposed to other viewpoints and develops a more informed perspective on the United States' role in the world.

In the United States, our teacher preparation programs aim to support the development of teachers who are knowledgeable in their discipline, have acquired depth of pedagogical knowledge and experience, and are "highly qualified" to teach in our nation's classrooms. Is this enough? New teachers enter the classroom with intense pressure to prepare students for tests-- successfully passing the tests, to be exact. This is the expectation. Yet teaching encompasses far more. One aim is to help young people acquire inquiry experiences that promote those educative experiences John Dewey argued were the purpose of education. The thinking and decision making and creation of new knowledge that a robust inquiry can stimulate in students is second only to the experience that robust inquiry has on the formation of a new teacher's attitude towards teaching and learning. In other countries, inquiry approaches and expectations for teachers to create engaging curriculum are the norm. COST tries to place students in classrooms where curiosity and inquiry are the aim of a teacher's lessons.

Through the COST Program, students apply to fulfill their licensure requirements for student teaching in another country. All COST school sites are supervised by university supervisors whose institutions partner with COST. Student teachers from the states are afforded mentoring from a university supervisor and cooperating teacher who reflect their country's approach to fostering teachers. Additionally, each COST student is required to fulfill extra coursework, a clinical practicum in a domestic classroom, plus orientation through Ohio University's Education Abroad office. All this is to prepare as best we can a student's entry into another country's culture, and another country's school, which has its own culture and climate to learn. Taken for granted assumptions, even in English speaking countries, are turned upside down. And students must have preparation for this as well as support when they experience it. It is this discontinuity that is one key to fostering the growth and educative experiences for the student.

Stacy Simonyi is a former COST student, now an educator in a school in southeast Ohio, in the foothills of Appalachia. Her story speaks to the experiences of students going abroad, often for the first time.

COST students are immersed in the society and culture of the country in which they are student teaching. Increasing the intensity and pressure of cross cultural experience is being placed in a school where the student must also learn its norms, values, and culture both within the school and in the cooperating teacher's classroom. COST students come to the awareness that they cannot separate themselves, their personal, social selves, from the "teacher" self. They teach who they are, and by necessity , as Stacy explains:

From her experiences in COST, Stacy learned about her resilience and capacity to make good decisions. She had, for example, never been outside the country. Preparing to leave on a flight that required multiple connections and would take almost 24 hours was overwhelming. Each step brought Stacy into new situations, requiring her to negotiate through airports to make connections, use different currency, learn to read signs, ask directions and so forth. All this before she arrived at her destination, New Zealand. Stacy describes the impact in this way:

Curiosity by itself is not sufficient for growth, but as Stacy makes clear, a sense of commitment to help students grow and develop fuels the motivation to learn to teach in such a way. In our college of education at Ohio University, one of the aims we have for teacher preparation is to foster ethical decision-makers who are reflective about what they teach and how they teach their students. New teachers have deeply embedded ideas and concepts about what it means to be a teacher, often untouched by their education programs because no experiences in the field or university classroom or the readings may actually challenge these concepts. So new teachers move into classrooms and are largely unreflective about their own unexamined biases and beliefs about young people. This can be disadvantageous to both the new teacher and his or her students, especially where the new teacher is in a school of highly diverse populations.

COST students go into their student teaching aware that their students will be diverse, have extremely different experiences from them, be more widely traveled or speak other languages, and most definitely have different world views. This is given, but nevertheless poses a challenge for each COST student, who meets the challenge in his or her own way. Stacy's class had Maori children in it, so she was exposed to the Maori language and customs in her classroom, something she knew nothing about. But she was surprised by the "Kiwi" children, too, and their speech and behavior patterns which she had to adapt to and come to appreciate.

Being an insider as a teacher in the school yet an outsider, too, Stacy's curiosity supported a developing and deepening reflection about herself, her own culture and beliefs, and, most importantly, her concepts about what it means to be a teacher.

In her weekly reflections to me (her stateside university supervisor), Stacy's view of teaching expanded rapidly. Under the mentorship of her New Zealand cooperating teacher and the other teachers in the school, Stacy was acculturated into a way of teaching that put students first, that encouraged teacher growth and curiosity as prerequisites for engaging lessons and teaching. She was expected to create all her curriculum, since the school did not rely on textbooks. So teaching became an art to be cultivated with her students. One size did not fit all. Assessments were on-going and organic, relying on teacher decision making and judgment. And she had to learn not only to listen carefully and pay attention to her students, but to become aware of the importance of communication, something we often take for granted in our own culture. COST students must be aware and awake to subtle language variations, for even when everyone speaks English; they do not always use the same syntax. And words often mean something different. For example, when there was a field trip to the beach, Stacy's children asked if she had togs. What are togs, she thought? When she asked the children, she figured out that togs was the word used for bathing suit. Stacy realized that:

Curiosity was the impetus that drew Stacy into a New Zealand classroom to learn to teach. Stacy also had resolve and courage as she met each challenge with intelligence and grace. For her courage, she was offered the opportunity to learn to teach in a country that puts students at the center of the teaching and learning act. Here is how Stacy sees herself two years after returning from New Zealand:

And isn't this who we would want teaching our children? A teacher who is open to the world will be open to her students, to their lived experiences, their differences, their value as distinct human beings deserving of the best education she can offer them.

Notes

1 Berlyne, D.E. (1960) Conflict, Arousal, and Curiosity. NY: McGraw-Hill

2 Freire, Paulo (1998) Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp 79-84. In this section of a chapter entitled "Teaching is Not Just Transferring Knowledge" Freire discusses the transformative power of curiosity as the basis for a critical classroom, one that is dynamic, propelled by questions and seeking to understand. "To stimulate questions and critical reflection about the questions, asking what is meant by this or that question, is fundamental to curiosity. Otherwise, all we have is the passivity of student sin the face of the discursive explanations of the teacher and answers to questions that have not been asked."

3 Ibid, p 81

4 Ibid, p 82

5 COST receiving school sites are in Ecuador, Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico, Bahamas, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, Greece and Turkey. Universities throughout these countries partner with COST institutions to place, mentor and supervise COST student teachers in each site.

Freire, Paulo. (1998) Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Langham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Rosalie M Romano earned her doctorate in Social Foundations of Education at University of Washington. She is currently Associate Professor of Educational Studies at Ohio University, where she coordinates the COST Program, teaches undergraduate courses in social contexts of education and multicultural education and teaches graduates on moral and ethical dimensions of education. Her research interests are critical pedagogy in teacher preparation, international education, and the moral contexts of education. She is the author of Hungry Minds in Hard Times and Forging an Educative Community, both books published by Peter Lang Press, and a number of book chapters and articles.

Rosalie M Romano, Ohio University
Associate Professor of Educational Studies
COST Coordinator
105E McCracken Hall
College of Education
Athens, OH 45701
romano@ohio.edu

Stacy Simonyi is currently Library Media Specialist at the Tri-County Career Center in Nelsonville, OH. She is a former COST Teacher. tj_ssimonyi@seovec.org