Students spend their summer teaching in Spain, Uzbekistan
International schools have been calling Grand Canyon University with a version of the same request for years now.
"We want GCU teachers. We want GCU teachers. What do we have to do to get GCU teachers?" said College of Education professor Dr. Shawna Martino, who often fields the calls.
Martino's answer is Canyon Global Educators, a College of Education program that flies education majors overseas for 10 to 15 days to teach and serve the local community. Over the summer, five students went to Spain, six more to Uzbekistan's Karakalpakstan region.
While GCU runs a global missions office open to any student in any discipline, Martino, who has taught in the College of Education since 2010 and has been on mission trips from India to Haiti, wanted something more focused.
"What we wanted to do," she said, "was to take that idea, but then specifically have it just for teaching and just for education students. … It takes them a little beyond just a regular mission trip, and really is driven by, 'This is going to be your career. Is (teaching abroad) something you would want to consider?'”
In Spain, the work split in two. The first half of the trip was spent at a community center outside Madrid serving North African immigrant families, where the stakes are high. The second half was at the Evangelical Christian Academy in Camarma, a school serving first through 12th grades that exists to educate the children of missionaries.
Spain requires language proficiency before naturalization, Martino said. Immigrant children take their coursework in Spanish and study English as a required subject every year, often on top of the French, Arabic or Berber they speak at home. "I don't know about you, but I don't think I'd be able to do it," she said.
One member of the Canyon Global Educators team could relate to the children.
Itzel Atienzo-Carrera started preschool in Phoenix speaking no English. Her parents had immigrated from Mexico and spoke little English, so Spanish was the only language at home. She faced a steep learning curve, and she got through it with the help of two teachers, one who spoke Spanish and one who spoke English. Today she teaches the languages to others.
"It was nice to be able to, in a sense, see kids that were just like me when I was younger and be able to teach them in ways that I would have liked," said Atienzo-Carrera, a GCU senior studying elementary special education and the only fluent Spanish speaker on her trip. Her rule in the classroom was firm but forgiving. Ask in English first, and if that stalls, switch.
Teammate Morgan Virtue shared her own unique connection with the missionary students.
A daughter of missionaries, Virtue spent eight years in the Philippines at a school much like ECA, and left at 16 when the global pandemic sent her family back to the United States.
“It was very nostalgic and gave me a lot of gratitude for what these missionaries are doing," said Virtue, a senior double-majoring in elementary education and professional writing. "If the kids are struggling, it can be hard for missionaries to stay overseas. That's something that I don't typically get to connect with over students in the U.S.
"This trip was focused on kind of combining missions with education, which was really cool because those are two of my biggest interests. It just helped me better understand how big God is and how much He's really doing in the world beyond just my own bubble that I live in right now."
The students – Virtue, Atienzo-Carrera, Aizlyn Shaftoe, Gracie Sauer and Jaidyn Burgwald – prepped their own lessons, collected materials and taught in English, with Spanish support where it was needed. Despite all the preparation, Martino said, the most impactful moment for most students comes when they stand in front of children who aren't understanding anything.
"What do I do?" they ask her. What they find, once the words run out, is rarely a failure.
"I say, well, you have got to figure out a way to communicate it with them. You might need to model it for them. You might need to do it with them," Martino said.
The lesson, she said, is bigger than any one class back in Phoenix.
"Kids are kids wherever you go, and they just really want someone to love on them, to see them for who they are and value them,” Martino added. “I think our students learn to do that through this experience."
College of Education professor Dr. Micaela Swan, a former dual-language school principal with a passion for teaching internationally, volunteered to take a second team abroad for the first time this summer. Her six students – Hannah Meir, Nicole Cox, Chloe Kiel, Danika Kissinger, Sasha Pelson and Morgan Olive – taught third through eighth graders four to five hours a day and spent the afternoons lesson planning.
The local teachers were skeptical from the first day and questioned how Americans could teach children who spoke Karakalpak and Russian.
The children were quiet at first, she said. Then the GCU students started running games and other activities, and the room turned loud. By the last day, the local teachers had never seen such significant progress from their students.
"They just took off, and they were speaking only English the entire time," Swan said.
She watched her own students change just as fast. "I got to see them grow as educators in a very short period of time," she said, "and then I also got to see them grow as people.
"Even though I was only there for a short period of time, I know that our impact is going to continue on well after we're gone."
In some cases, it already has. The schools that keep calling have gotten some of what they asked for. Three GCU alumni now teach at ECA, and two of them went on Martino's trips first.
The program is growing. Next year, Martino's team will add a week at a Christian school in Tirana, Albania, and Swan’s group will visit Mongolia. Martino hopes to reach five or six trips a year.
The limit is not students or invitations. It's leaders. "I would like to have more faculty who would volunteer their time," Martino said.
What makes it worth it are seeing alumni now on the other side. This spring in Camarma, one of those alums, a former student who told Martino on her own trip that the school "feels like home," sat down with the undergraduates standing where she once had.
"Having somebody their age who's right where they were at (in life) share what kind of an impact this trip had, was really special," Martino said. "And for me, it was special because it was like a full circle moment."
If you are interested in upcoming trips, reach out to Canyon Global Educators at [email protected].
GCU News senior writer Jason Gonzalez can be reached at [email protected].
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