College of Education News

Erica Hildebrand pulled aside the large fern leaf as she scrutinized the jungle canopy above her. An expanse of lush green foliage dotted with Ecuadorian sunlight extended as far as the eye could see, but not a child could be found. She ducked a branch and pushed through another fern spray only to have it snap back in her face. She laughed and sat heavily on the ground, turning her head skyward and shouting "I GIVE UP! Come out, I give up!" As it turned out for Hildebrand, a junior in Elementary Education, playing hide-and-go-seek with her students in the jungles of Ecuador was not the best idea she'd ever had.

While some college students spend their academic breaks sleeping in, many College of Education students go above and beyond, volunteering overseas in places such as Ecuador, Israel, Uganda and South Africa. They spend their time in soup kitchens, cleaning and rebuilding homes, distributing food to the hungry, connecting with community members and promoting literacy while learning and teaching about different cultures.

"We support and encourage our students to volunteer abroad," said Kathy Ryan, Undergraduate Academic Adviser at the College of Education. "It gives them a chance to develop a broader perspective of the world and gain valuable experience to make them better future educators."

"I want to be a bilingual teacher," said Hildebrand, junior in Elementary Education, "and I love learning about different cultures." So she jumped at the chance to teach English for three weeks in Arutam, Ecuador, in the middle of the rain forest during Winter Break 2008. At the base of the Andean Foothills, Arutam is home to a small indigenous Shuar community of only 40 members.

"The Arutam community had a small school with students ranging in age from four to 15," Hildebrand explained. She helped the schoolmaster lead his classes and implemented her own English lessons using bilingual books and songs. "It was very difficult to create a lesson that would be engaging to both a four-year-old and a 15-year-old. I faced this challenge by breaking the students into groups and having them do activities at age appropriate levels. It was, however, certainly a bit hectic having so many things going on at once in the classroom."

On the other side of the globe, Lisa Schneider swept her paintbrush over the angry marks of graffiti covering the courtyard walls of a small school in Yerucham, Israel. Vibrant flowers and bright shooting stars slowly replaced the vandalism-- to the delight of the special needs students watching from their classroom windows.

Working with the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and the Israel Campus Coalition (ICC), Schneider, junior in Elementary Education, and other students from all over the United States volunteered in Israel during Winter Break 2008. In order to attend the trip, each participant raised $950 to contribute toward the construction of a reinforced playground in Sderot, Israel. Sderot is on the border with Gaza and under frequent threat of rocket attack as a result.

"The children need to be able to find shelter within 15 seconds," explained Schneider, "and this playground will offer them a safe place to go. The walls of the recreational area also drown out the sounds of the rockets." The playground, which officially opened in March of 2009, also offers a walk-in psychiatry center to help residents cope with any effects of the conflict.

In addition to her work with the school, Schneider also reached out to the local community. She and her group worked extensively, picking clementines for the homeless, planting trees in a forest preserve, insulating the house of an older citizen who had recently fallen ill, clearing the undergrowth in forest areas prone to brush fires and picking up garbage and refuse.

"It was important to me that I show the local people that they weren't alone, that their community was important and that we wanted to help," said Schneider. "And I feel we really got the point across." When asked to help prepare food for a soup kitchen, the group of 50 college students peeled weeks' worth of potatoes, saving the elderly couple that owned the establishment hundreds of hours of work. They then set to work cleaning and repairing the dilapidated storage room itself and finished what would have been an arduous project within half an hour. "When we left, the owner was so impressed that he ran out to the bus, nearly in tears, to thank us all again."

Two thousand miles due South, a beat-up landline phone rang out into the dry air. "Hello?" Katie Krahulec asked through the crackling handset; the 10-second time delay from Uganda to Champaign-Urbana made communication difficult. "We've only just got here," she spoke a little louder into the receiver. "I start teaching on Monday!"

Upon her arrival in Uganda in June 2009, Krahulec, senior in Elementary Education, was overwhelmed by the reception she received from the townsfolk in Pajule, a displacement camp in northern Uganda. As the trucks topped the green hill crest, breathing out red road dust from their tires, Krahulec and her volunteer group were greeted by dancers in full regalia, drumbeats and a raucous band, townsfolk emerging from thatched huts, and a flood of barefoot children who lead them to the town Parish. More than 300 people welcomed them, pulling them from the car to shake hands, hug, and thank them for coming to help. "I'm a stranger to them, but I was treated like family," she recalled. "In fact, I've already been invited to dinner by more people than I can count!"

"I'm here with Invisible Conflicts, a student organization at U of I, sponsoring 20 children to attend the local school," Krahulec said. "These children have been orphaned by civil war and can no longer afford school supplies or pay for other fees." They're also attempting to set up an after-school song-and-dance program for all students. "The elders in this community take on a lot of responsibility and we wanted to help involve the younger generations as well," she explained. They hope to begin a student-run club in which the older students teach traditional cultural songs and dances to the younger ones in a safe, fun and productive environment."

Krahulec will also be teaching math and English. "The schoolteacher handed me a book and the rest is up to me," she said. She will have to be especially creative with her lesson plans, as well, due to extremely limited resources: "the kids have no books, rulers, or even full sheets of paper, not to mention calculators."

Despite the differences in setting, Hildebrand, Schneider and Krahulec agree that their time spent volunteering abroad was and will be a powerful personal experience. "The love I felt in the Shuar community was incredible," said Hildebrand. "My students were so respectful, cooperative and appreciative even though I was a guest in their town. At the end of my trip, they did not want to see me go!"

Schneider, in fact, plans to return to Israel soon for a yearlong volunteer expedition. "I know we made such a great impact, but I wanted to do so much more," she said. "I want to see a project through, from start to finish."

Most important, Hildebrand felt she had helped show the Shuar - and herself - that, while they came from a different backgrounds and cultures, they shared many of the same values and dreams. "No matter how foreign a culture may appear," she said, "with a little nurturing, a deep and meaningful relationship can form in which both parties learn from one another and emerge as better, more open-minded people."

"This trip has already been life-changing," said Krahulec, the phone connection still shaky. "The sense of community here is the strongest and most welcoming I've ever felt, and - with everyone working together - I know we're going to make a difference." She and her fellow volunteers will continue work in Uganda until the end of July after which point she hopes other University of Illinois students will take up the mantle.

One of those students is Samantha Mann, who felt inspired after hearing of her classmates' work abroad. "There are so many wonderful volunteer resources here at school that people don't take advantage of," said Mann, freshman in Special Education. "Everyone has the opportunity to help others." Mann is currently working with fellow freshman Sydney Marcus and the Hillel Foundation, a Jewish organization on campus, to plan - from the ground up - a volunteer trip to South Africa in the 2010-2011 academic year.

Passionate about the power of education, Mann hopes to promote literacy in South Africa by having a group of students compose short children's stories and draw corresponding illustrations. "We plan to get the resulting book published and have the class read the stories to younger students," she said. "We would ultimately like to sell the book with proceeds going to benefit schools in South Africa. We want to show these kids that the sky is the limit."

Mann encourages other students to get involved. "I hope to make a positive impact by showing the children that there are people that care and want to give them a better education," Mann emphasized. "I also want to show students at U of I that if I can plan and implement something amazing like this, anyone can."