July-Nov. 2014 in Temuco

During my time in Chile, I ended up working in a brand new school facility in a pretty large city in southern Chile. It wasn't the rural experience that a lot of volunteers have (there was more technology in the classrooms that I knew how to use, for example), but I did request to be placed in a medium-sized city, so I got exactly what I thought I wanted.

Through living with a wonderful host family and working alongside experienced English teachers, in my five months in Chile, I learned and developed professionally and personally. My biggest struggles were in adapting to the conservative expectations of some of my older colleagues and host parents (mostly in terms of the very prevalent gender roles that i witnessed), and in learning to work with two head teachers who had very different teaching styles and some interpersonal disagreements that predated my time with the program. Working through those issues, however, gave me the flexibility and appreciation to work in almost any work environment.

The best parts of the program were becoming comfortable with my students, enjoying the energy that I could bring to the classroom, realizing that lesson planning wasn't as hard as I had thought, and forming close friendships with my head teachers, my host mom and my host sister. Plus, Chile is a beautiful country and I loved getting to travel some with my host family, and on my own after the program ended.

Through EODP, volunteers get a first hand look at what it means to be a teacher in Chile. No system is perfect, and education, no matter where you go in the world, is always going to be a struggle. That being said, I got to see a very different side of Chile than I would have seen in any other context -- a side that is, in many ways, more real than other travel and work experiences for foreigners. The things that I learned with EODP are skills that will help me for the rest of my life, and the school and family that I was a part of will stay with me forever.