The international education sector often champions people-to-people exchanges by sending students abroad, but teachers are an important part of this process. Tim Walz’s political ascendancy reminds us just how foundational teaching abroad can be to an individual or even a nation.
Walz, the current governor of Minnesota, was recently named as the vice-presidential running mate to Kamala Harris in the United States presidential election. He is also a former teacher, including a year spent teaching abroad in China.
When Walz graduated from Chadron State College in 1989, he accepted a position through WorldTeach at Foshan No 1 High School located in Foshan, Guangdong, a province just north of Hong Kong.
During this period, while China was still opening up to foreigners, there were especially few Americans teaching there at the time. The experience had a profound impact on Walz.
Upon returning, he stayed in education, becoming a local teacher and coach. But he and his wife remained connected to China.
The couple started an organisation called Educational Travel Adventures that brought American students on study tours to China.
Americans do not study abroad in relatively high numbers, and it has been especially a struggle to get students to go to non-Western locales. The connection Walz made to his host country while teaching there exponentially influenced the students he eventually took back with him.
Funding
There are many reasons students may elect to not study abroad, but funding can certainly be a critical factor. Adding in tuition, fees, and living expenses, studying abroad is infeasible for a large portion of students.
Teaching abroad can alleviate these concerns. Getting paid to go overseas to teach can overcome these financing issues, as plane tickets and housing are often covered by these jobs. Even volunteer programmes can still cover a lot of expenses.
It likely won’t make anyone rich, but teachers will get to travel to far-off places and experience new cultures, customs and communities. These experiences are rich and rewarding on their own.
English is the most commonly desired taught subject abroad, but there are a range of opportunities from cultural aspects to specialised subjects.
Popular programmes through the US government, like Fulbright’s English Teaching Assistant (ETA) programme or Peace Corps Education projects, emphasise the cultural exchange aspects of teaching.
For those concerned about finances, there are positions that pay well, too, especially for those with teaching credentials or English as a second language-related certificates.
Globally, international schools and private study centres can be fairly lucrative given the right credentials and factoring in the local cost of living. Schools in countries around the Middle East, for instance, have become popular destinations for foreign teachers looking for good salaries and quality of life.
For a mix of salary and cultural diplomacy, governments like Japan and Korea have long-running foreign teacher programmes with the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme and the English Program in Korea (EPIK), respectively.
These programmes have become quite competitive in recent decades with their growing popularity.
Special accomplishments
There may be some who believe the opportunity costs are too high to teach abroad. Young people are getting messages today that they must be in constant competition to keep up with their peers.
This sentiment may be a deterrent that also explains why some Americans do not want to study abroad as well.
But this concern is misguided. Life is not a straight, linear line.
Teaching abroad can be a career in itself or a springboard to other opportunities. Walz’s experience in China helped begin his teaching career, which in turn propelled his political rise through local offices to national candidacy.
The skills and experiences learned abroad can also be the foundation for other special accomplishments.
Walz joins other alumni from teaching in China around this era who went on to have illustrious careers like Peter Hessler, an author who rose to fame writing about his time as a Peace Corps teacher in China with the award-winning River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, and Michael Meyer, a travel writer and professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
Likewise, Walz went through WorldTeach, a non-profit founded by Harvard students. On its website, it boasts a congratulations message to another impressive alumnus from the programme, Michael Kremer, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019.
Cultivating global relationships
Teaching abroad can bring soft power synergy to the global community, with both students and teachers learning from one another. Measures of soft power, though, often emphasise metrics on international students or where leaders have studied abroad.
Having political leaders spend considerable amounts of time in other countries can be crucial in alleviating possible misunderstandings or avoiding diplomatic incidents.
For instance, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s exchange to Iowa during his youth or his daughter’s attendance at Harvard are often listed as a soft power boon for the US.
While China sends hundreds of thousands of students to the US each year, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE), the US reciprocates by sending very few students to China – reportedly only a few hundred in the last few years.
However, the US does send a much larger number of teachers to China and abroad.
Reportedly, roughly 150,000 foreign teachers were teaching in China during pre-COVID, many of whom were Americans. Since there is no central database for tracking teachers, like the IIE does with students, the exact numbers and demographics of teachers abroad are estimated.
The students in their classes not only learn about the US, but the American teachers also become familiar with the host country. There are foreign teachers across the world making this kind of impact.
These are important opportunities to foster diplomacy and foreign policy experience. On why he decided to teach in China, Walz was quoted in The Hill saying: “China was coming, and that’s the reason that I went.”
Now, this former teacher may be coming to the White House, bringing his experience teaching in China with him.
Ryan M Allen is associate professor at Soka University of America, United States.
University World News
