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Teaching Music: an Overseas Experience Sarah C. Bellmore, Sherwood
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Traveling overseas began with a high school orchestra trip I took to Italy and Greece my junior year of high school and then continued in Seoul, South Korea with a language study program my freshman year of college. The thrill of learning about other cultures and experiencing worlds other than my own was an inter- est of mine and I knew I needed more. I also had a passion for teaching music and learning about music from other cultures. However, the cost of traveling to so many distant lands directly out of college was more than I could afford. I also wanted to use the music education degree I had worked so hard to achieve. I had heard about teaching overseas toward the end of college and was told there were mainly general music, choir and band programs abroad. String programs were available, but there were not as many. In my last year of college, I decided to take the risk of teaching overseas. Even though I probably would not find a position teaching strings, this would be the best way to use my de- gree, fill my passions, travel and earn some money. What I did not realize was that I would walk away with an experience most people would not even dream about.
Spread Your Wings
One of the ways to get a job teaching overseas is to attend an overseas teaching job fair. The job fair I decided to attend happened to take place four days into my student teaching placement, but I knew what I had to offer and went in with an open mind. I did some research ahead of time and had narrowed it down to two parts of the world I was willing to move to, Asia and Europe, because that is where I had been previously. When I got to the fair it was mass chaos with hundreds of eager teachers and hundreds of schools looking to hire. I have to admit, I was quite intimidated, but knew I needed to keep the intentions of teaching music and traveling at the forefront. I talked with many schools in Asia and Europe and obtained some interviews, but not enough to satisfy the
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odds I was up against considering I was just coming out of college. I visited with schools from Africa, the Middle East and Central/South America and secured a few more interviews. The first interview I had that weekend happened to be for the American International School (AIS) of Kuwait. At that point, I was thrilled to be interviewing for my potential first job and it did not even hit me that Kuwait was in the Middle East. I discussed all of the other options with my family and decided that if AIS Kuwait offered me a job, I would consider taking it because: I had a good feel for the school, I had an opportunity to teach music to children from all over the world and I had an opportunity to visit an area of the world most people would not visit. At the end of the job fair, I was offered a position to teach middle school general music at AIS Kuwait and I was ready to start a new chapter of my life.
Pack Your Bags! We’re going to the Middle East! When I told my family, friends and pro- fessors I would be moving to Kuwait to teach music, everyone was happy for me, but I could tell most people thought I was a little crazy to voluntarily move to the Middle East. I went into preparing for
the job with an open mind and started to gather resources. In my last few days in the United States, I carefully packed five suit- cases, which contained all items needed to live and teach music overseas for one school year. I was told I would have some musical resources for my classroom such as a piano, a file cabinet of music and various instruments. But I was unsure of what musical level my students would be at so I had to take any and all resources that were familiar to me, including my entrusted violin and faithful viola.
Adapting My Music Education Knowledge to the Kuwaiti Culture When I arrived in Kuwait and started to prepare my classroom, I looked around expecting to see Kuwaiti drums and instruments representative of the area. But when I looked closer, I saw a regular music classroom that you would find in the United States. The same music themed posters and instruments I grew up with were right in front of me. This was reas- suring and helped me to push forward.
At the start of the year, I was informed to be conscious of the stigma of music with the Islamic religion and also to make sure
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