Teaching becomes a new experience
Life can take us on some interesting paths, those roads that are less travelled which might appear to lead far away from what we imagined to be our original goal. But then who can say? Because sometimes those diversions can turn out to be nothing more or less than an essential and carefully disguised part of the main event.
Dr Garret Campbell has more reasons that most to appreciate these unexpected outcomes. Currently CEO of the Global Schoolroom, an organisation dedicated to sharing educational experiences worldwide, Campbell obtained a doctorate in environmental physiology and assumed that the course of his life was set.
“My interest was in environmental botany. I certainly had no intentions of going into teaching,” he told me. “I worked for the OPW, the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture in a consultancy capacity for about two years.
“I advised farmers on the SSI and REPS schemes and did a lot of travelling around the country, I loved the work.”
But while Campbell was studying at UCD, a seed had inadvertently been planted. Like many students, while he was working on his thesis, he needed money to help pay the bills and initially accepted work as a substitute teacher, eventually obtaining a H Dip in Education.
“As much as I enjoyed working for the OPW and the others, to my surprise, the further I got away from teaching, I realised that I missed it.
“So in 1997, I decided to make a career change and get my H Dip, return to teaching fulltime. It was about this time that I met my wife Gwen who was teaching as well..”
The couple both had a love of travel and a keen interest in international aid programmes, particularly those which advocated self-help and which enabled marginalised communities to become self-sufficient.
The couple made full use of the liberal school holidays and travelled extensively to South America, Africa, India and Mongolia, often volunteering in remote communities.
“I was lecturing part time in maths at UCD, something I still do, and Gwen and I were talking about what we were going to do during the summer break. We realised that we’d never been to India and decided that this year, that’s where we would go.
“But neither of us were interested in the kind of holiday where you just travel around and look at things. We both wanted to do something practical, to give something back.
“A friend of Gwen’s told her about Fr Anthony, a priest she knew who was doing fantastic work in education in North East India. She suggested we get in touch with him. But that wasn’t as straightforward as it sounds because although this was 2006, it was almost impossible to get through on the phone and really, the only means of communication was by post. But eventually we heard back from Fr Anthony, who was delighted that we were offering him our educational experiences.
“He said that we must come and help him to train local teachers and we agreed, although we had very little idea of exactly where exactly it was we were going or just how we were going to accomplish what Fr Anthony had in mind.”
North-eastern India is, in many ways, a land apart, and a true frontier region with over 2,000 km of border with Bhutan, China Myanmar and Bangladesh. It is connected to the rest of India by a narrow corridor of land that’s only 20km wide.
The north-eastern states are often referred to as the Seven Sisters and the area is home to more than 166 separate tribes. Despite its beauty, extensive wildlife and rich cultural heritage, it’s an area still infrequently visited by tourists.
Studies have shown that this remote region is lagging behind the rest of India in terms of development and this has resulted in unrest, unemployment and a lack of infrastructure, all issues which can be greatly improved by a more comprehensive educational system.
“We finally heard back from Fr Anthony,” Campbell explains. “We’d imagined we’d be helping him building walls or doing other bits and pieces but we realised that wasn’t what he had in mind. So we began to put together a few ideas and decided to take a chance and just go and see what happened.”
As Campbell was discussing their forthcoming trip over dinner with long-time friend Robert Power of Cornmarket Financial Services, Robert said this project might well be something which his company would be interested in supporting.
Cornmarket supplied a small grant to enable Garret and Gwen to undertake some basic research and, although the couple didn’t realise it at the time, it was then that the Global Schoolroom project was actually born.
“We met hundreds of teachers and travelled to lots of villages in a bockety old jeep we’d managed to get our hands on,” Campbell recalls. “And it was a totally incredible experience. The people were amazing, welcoming and warm and intensely interested in all aspects of education. Fr Anthony proved to be just as extraordinary as we had imagined him to be we quickly realised how much scope there was here for mutual learning.”
The couple returned home with the beginnings of a plan, which would involve Irish teachers visiting northeastern India with a view to sharing educational techniques and ideas with their Indian counterparts.
The ethos they had developed for Global Schoolroom promoted the sharing of educational experience between communities worldwide with a view to helping eradicate poverty, promoting economic development and building sustainable communities.
The organisation works directly with teachers and communities to build a strong framework for high standards of teacher education and all Global Schoolroom programmes are designed to be sustained by local networks.
“This sharing of good educational practices has enriched the collective educational experience and widened the cultural horizons of everyone involved, ” says Campbell. “We learn more than we teach.”
The first teachers Global Schoolroom recruited went to villages in the area in 2008 as the first volunteers in what was to be a series of three-year programmes. Preparation was intensive and involved workshops, seminars and six weekends of training sessions in Dublin.
“We listened to over 300 teachers in 2006,” Campbell says.
“And we found that the level of confidence amongst many of them was extremely low. They felt as if they were not being fully supported by their schools.
“We believed that a formal training programme with full university accreditation and the possibility of an internationally recognised qualification was necessary.
“And with the help of UCD, this eventually led to the Global Schoolroom Diploma in Teacher Education,” adds Campbell.
But since an Irish accreditation is not yet recognised in India, Global Schoolroom is currently working with the Don Bosco University in Guwahati to ensure that Global Schoolroom programmes culminate in locally recognised accreditation, and such recognition appears to be imminent.
Last year, four Indian teachers who had graduated from the Global Schoolroom programme came to Ireland for further training and will go on to become trainers themselves. And it is this reciprocal approach that the organisation supports above all else.
“When international development issues are dealt with in the schoolroom it’s often by way of superficial snapshots and as a result, a student may learn about overpopulation by, say, looking at Calcutta, but they may never hear about Calcutta, or, indeed India again.
“And by focusing on a single aspect of life in one place, the developing world is inadvertently presented as an exotic or different other, and the student feels little empathy for their plight.
“We want to disseminate the information we have gathered more widely through research currently being undertaken in the University of Limerick. We want to develop the project’s links to post-primary schools in Ireland.”
As the project goes from strength to strength, many of the Irish teachers have returned to give glowing accounts of their experiences. “It was an incredible opportunity for me professionally and personally,” teacher Joni Clarke says of her time in the jungle at Umkiang.
Primary school principal Maurice O’Mahony said it was the most important thing he had done in his 25-year teaching career.
Helena McSorely of INTO was a member of the GS team in 2010.
“Both my teaching and my life have been enriched by this experience,” says McSorely. “It has given this fifty-something-year-old new challenges, new energy and a renewed love for my career,” says three-time returnee Tony O’Rourke.
Global Schoolroom has recently begun setting up a programme in Uganda and is currently recruiting teachers in Northern Ireland, Britain and the Republic of Ireland. The total cost — and that’s everything included — is €3,000.
Recent reports reveal that to date, the Global Schoolroom has trained some 600 Indian teachers.
* globalschoolroom.net
