The experience I had while participating in my program is something I believe everyone that has grown up in a first-world country should experience. Part of my program involved assisting teachers and facilitating the local curriculum in Belize. Part of this process for me personally entailed directly assisting students one-on-one and leading the classroom lessons in basic geometry and algebra.

Although it may seem that I was given a task similar to a substitute teacher, there were other lessons that I gained from this experience that could not be given in the United States. The students I worked with mainly came from low-income families, with little to no access to clean drinking water. Additionally, not all the students in my class had calculators, textbooks, and notebooks to fulfill their academic requirements. The classrooms were extremely run down, open windows with no air conditioning in humid and hot weather. Some classrooms did not have working projectors, requiring the teacher I was working with and I to change the way we taught the material on the fly. What really broke my heart was students begging for a dollar to buy a meal or clean drinking water. Truly this was a humbling experience that many may never experience.

Although my program was more in tune with social sciences and unrelated to my major, this experience helped me grow as a human being and reminded me not all of us are fortunate and have the academic luxuries we have in the United States. I am thankful for what I have and feel for those who do not.

Professionally, this experience has helped me expand my knowledge on working with different individuals that have very diverse backgrounds. This requires me to adapt on the job to meeting whatever needs they may have so that we are able to work together in a more efficient manner.

I hope that everyone in their lifetime can have such an experience to truly show them what goes on outside the United States and open their eyes to the reality that some face every day.

Name: Andre Edmond
Status: Freshman
Major: Computer Science
Hometown: Grand Haven, Michigan
Program: Contemporary Issues in Developing Societies in Belize