Twenty-one teachers from Ghana and the Philippines will be working at nine elementary and middle schools within St. Louis Public Schools as part of its first cultural teacher exchange program cohort.
Educators come to the school district with an average of 13 years of teaching experience and can speak multiple languages. The program aims to help diversify its staff and address its demand for math and science teachers.
The school district is constantly thinking of creative ways to responsively meet the learning needs of all students and enhance their academic performance, said Myra Berry, the chief of human resources and operations at St. Louis Public Schools.
“We want them to become more culturally aware and expand their knowledge and thinking to understand how to be productive on a global spectrum,” she said.
The district partnered with Jobs Connect USA, a teacher recruiting agency, to recommend applicants from Nigeria, Cameroon, Thailand, Brazil, Ghana and the Philippines. After an extensive screening process of 188 applicants, the district offered 21 people teaching positions in St. Louis. The district plans to extend offers to another 15 teachers by January 2025.
The cultural exchange program is at no cost to the district and requires teachers to obtain a J-1 Visa from the United States Department of State. Educators can teach in St. Louis between three and five years before returning to their home countries. Riverview Gardens School District and Normandy Schools Collaborative are also participating in the exchange program.
Recruitment has become difficult over the years for the district, and it is suffering from the national teacher shortage. St. Louis Public Radio requested the number of vacant teacher positions from the district, but it did not respond. However, as of July 1, most teachers in the district will receive a 17% raise over the next three years, the largest three-year increase they have seen over the last 20 years.
“We are looking at the teacher shortage for SLPS as being employed. We are still looking at those quality candidates that we have, it’s just fewer people are going into the field of education,” Berry said. “It's just hard to find the number of quality candidates that you need to fill your vacancy each year.”
The district is not looking at the program as the solution to filling those gaps, but as one way to help get more teachers in the classrooms. It hopes the program helps more classrooms become inclusive.
“We want our culture exchange teachers to connect their instruction to their personal experience,” Berry said. “They may bring phrases or games from their home countries and their various languages and connect that to their lessons.
Seth Owusu became interested in education after watching his grandfather teach children at night who were not good at math or reading. Owusu, who is from Ghana, has been a teacher for seven years and taught all grade levels except first grade. He read about the cultural exchange program online and thought it would be an opportunity for him to develop his teaching skills in another country.
“I wanted to turn lives around, like build somebody up,” he said. “I take pride when I know that I had a positive impact on somebody's life.”
Owusu said his students at Dewey International Studies School in the Hi-Pointe neighborhood are inquisitive and want to know everything about his home country. He incorporates Ghanaian music, food and language throughout his lesson plan to give students a more enriched classroom experience.
“I want to get the opportunity to educate students on certain values, like respect, like kindness, like empathy … because I have personal experiences in my life like going to school and my mom didn't have enough to take care of us,” Owusu said. “I want to tell them my experience, give them hope and let them know there's light at the end of the tunnel.”
