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A couple of weeks into his first teaching experience, Casey Koschmeder asked his class of 13- and 14-year olds a simple yet bold question: “Are you guys learning anything?” They offered a similarly straightforward answer. “No.” Like many novice teachers, Koschmeder, an elementary education senior, was learning to translate theory into practice. But he faced other hurdles, too—more than 8,000 miles from home, he was trying to connect with a group of students whose backgrounds couldn’t have been more different than his own. Koschmeder spent nine weeks last summer in Kenya, teaching students from the Kawangware slum outside Nairobi. Just a few months earlier, clashes between Kenyan political and ethnic groups had captured world headlines, forced formation of a new coalition government, and profoundly shaken his students’ lives. “Many of the children I taught were left either orphaned or homeless,” Koschmeder said. “Most of them hadn’t had much of an education.” Intent on earning practical experience and exploring, Koschmeder had arranged the trip through International Volunteer Headquarters, which places travelers in schools, orphanages, clinics, and other sites around the world. He wound up in a private academy teaching English, mathematics, and Christian religion. “I took all my methods notes, plans for activities, and supplies. I thought it would be similar to education in the United States,” Koschmeder said. “It was pretty much the opposite.” Koschmeder found a school making do with scarce resources and an emphasis on rote memorization. When his students made clear their boredom, he decided to try something new—buying a stack of children’s books at the local market, turning lessons into games, asking the kids to write daily journals. Originally from Williamsburg, Iowa, Koschmeder was drawn to opportunities at the UI College of Education. Here he co-founded a Colleges Against Cancer chapter, helped organize Relay for Life events that have raised more than $100,000 to date, served in UI Student Government, and became a resident assistant at Parklawn Hall. He’s also sought any chance to travel. The Kenya trip was unlike anything he’d experienced before. Suddenly he stood out, a very visible representative of a very small minority. Everyone from shopkeepers to bus drivers assumed he was rich, often adjusting their prices accordingly. The cultural divide initially separated him from his students, too—he’d hear them muttering mzungu, or “white person” in Kiswahili. “Then they realized I was serious about doing my job, and could help them with their English,” Koschemeder said. “They’d go home and brag to their parents, ‘Mzungu is teaching us English!’”
His classroom innovations also captured their attention, as did a field trip he organized to the national library. Up until then, only about 10 of the school’s 60-plus seventh- and eighth-grade students had ever set foot in a library. So, they all piled in a matatu—a minibus Koschmeder describes as “about the most dangerous thing on the road”—and made the short trip. “They thought that was the greatest thing,” he recalled. “It’s funny—I figured they would gravitate to storybooks, but instead they sought out the textbooks.” Koschmeder has also spent two summers working with children in Japan at Camp Adventure—an organization run for kids at American military bases. But he said his Kenyan students affected him in a way no others had. “These kids were eager to learn. They knew that it was the only way to help improve their society,” he said. “I love experiencing new worlds for myself, and coming home changed.”
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