Alum completes eye-opening teaching stint in Marshall Islands

Alum Alysse Dambach with some of the children who live on the remote island of Majkin in the Marshall Islands, where she spent a year teaching.

3:56 p.m., Aug. 8, 2007--Alysse Dambach, a UD alumna who graduated in 2006 with a bachelor's degree in elementary education, said she still gets nervous in crowds and avoids malls at all costs. But the resident of Stockholm, N.J., who recently returned from a year of teaching on the remote island of Majkin in the Marshall Islands, said the rewards from the experience far outweigh the temporary effect of culture shock.

“It's definitely a different culture in the Marshall Islands, and it gave me a greater appreciation for what we have here,” Dambach said. “I ended up living without electricity and running water and eating mostly rice and tuna fish, and I found I was very content. To come back here, where we have television and computers, is great but I know I can do without it.”

Dambach, who arranged her assignment through WorldTeach, the international teacher-placement agency, after graduating last summer, said the experience of living and teaching in a different part of the world also opened her eyes to how diverse two cultures can be.

“In my entire year there, I saw someone get angry only once,” she said. “Everything was shared, and besides school and church, nothing was ever timed. It was very relaxing. The island I was on was 2.4 square miles and had less than 300 residents.”

Dambach, who lived with a host family during her stay, and was paid a stipend of $125 a month, taught English as a second language to first- through eighth-graders five days a week. In the exchange, she learned Marshallese, endured an island-wide food shortage and learned how to adjust to a constant lack of privacy.

Dambach washes clothes by hand on Majkin Island, where she lived for a year without electricity and running water.

“You were never alone there,” she said. “Coming from an outside culture, that was strange at first, because sometimes you need to be alone, but people enjoyed each other's company. Everyone took time to sit and relax with each other. They had a hard life, but they enjoyed it.”

Soon to begin her first full-time teaching position in the States as a middle-school math teacher in central New Jersey, Dambach is looking forward to entering yet another culture. “I'm still in shock in certain ways,” she said. “I have a different way of thinking now, and I miss the people I left behind. But I've signed a year's teaching contract and a lease on an apartment.”

Article by Becca Hutchinson
Photos courtesy of Alysse Dambach