Education For Life
Written by: Steven McLaughlin
I have to say that when I started picking topics to write I spent a considerable amount of time steering away from writing about education, sometimes a guy just needs a break. My day job sees me working as a Physical Education and Health teacher, aka a gym teacher. If it were up to me I would be teaching English, or History, or even Science. Sometimes though you don’t get to pick a job, it picks you, and when I arrived at our school they were one Phys Ed teacher short, so I jumped in.
Our school is a therapeutic boarding school which is a fancy way of saying that the teachers here live alongside the special needs students we teach. It can be rather time consuming and exhausting but it’s absolutely the best job in the world for me. I end up spending almost every waking moment with students, around students, planning for students and talking about students, hence my resistance to writing about education at first.
Our very first winner at The Affero Project from April was Doulos Discovery School. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you need to check it out. It takes the idea of working and living among students to a whole new level. I’ve had the opportunity to know some of the people who work at Doulos personally throughout the years and I can say they are without a doubt some of the most passionate people I have ever met. Their zeal for life is uncanny, and that’s just what I know of them on a personal level As educators they are incredibly driven and creative people, hearing stories of how much they do with the little they have humbles me as a teacher.
At this point you may be wondering why Doulos Discovery School is our education cause. Well have I mentioned that it’s located in the Dominican Republic? A number of the people I mentioned above that have such a burning passion for education have given up comfy lifestyles in the United States in order to move to a place in the world that many have given up on. They not only live with the students they teach, but many times also get to know and come alongside the families of their students. They have made this move because they believe that everyone should have an equal chance at receiving a great education. Sometimes at work I get stressed out because my wife and I moved to New England from the Midwest and now we are constantly surrounded by kids that need our assistance, it can be slightly overwhelming. To move to a whole different country in order to follow the dream of helping kids, to give up part of their lives so that others can have better lives is astounding to me, but it is definitely something I want to help support.
To find out more about the Doulos Discovery school and the awesome people who live and work there go to http://www.doulosdiscovery.org/ .