RMI

I just finished reading a summation of this year's crop of students from Dartmouth who are teaching in the Marshall Islands. I was there in 2000, and it's incredible to see how much the program has grown. When I was there, Dartmouth sent 5 students for one term. Now there are more than 15 students spread throughout the atolls, every one of them much more focused on teaching and working with the community, with an incredible support system in place both there and in the states. Back in 2000, we were thrown to the lions, so to speak, in that we had no training in ESL (except for some guy talking to us for 30 minutes in Hanover) and no idea how difficult it would be to enact change in the classroom when there. These kids needed so much more than teachers - they needed better doctors, counselors, sex ed teachers - you name it, they needed it.

I never really got over my time there - it was just too painful to see my ideals of changing lives crushed by the reality of insufficient preparation and lack of support (as well as quite a healthy dose of my not allowing myself to feel like I ever moved on). But looking at the program now, with everything it has done, I am amazed. In eight years they have put kids on every major atoll, constructed a solid support system involving year-long, on site program coordinators and international financial backing, and this past month finished a staged run of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Even though it was a shambles when I was there, the program has grown and flourished. It is healing to know that I was part of that process, even if it was rough. What a beautiful thing.