Idaho State University Students Travel to the Dominican Republic to Participate in a Teaching Practicum

For the second year in a row, students from the Idaho State University Teaching and Educational Studies (TES) Department traveled to the Dominican Republic as part of the International Reaching Out and Reflecting (ROARing) Experience on April 6-13, 2024. The purpose of the practicum is to help future teachers understand the complexities of teaching students from diverse backgrounds and to better understand differences between international and local Idaho school contexts.

Thanks to a grant provided by the College of Education Dean’s Excellence Fund, participants studied abroad and gained intensive hands-on knowledge teaching and learning within the Carol Morgan School (CMS) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; the oldest city in the Americas. Many of the teaching students have never left the USA, or even Intermountain West, prior to this course, and had the unique opportunity to work alongside teachers and school leaders from CMS to get first-hand experience working within an international school. 

This experience provided hands-on knowledge that helps future teachers better serve, lead, and understand people from other cultures. Specifically, participating students are able to build upon this experience to improve learning for their future students and classrooms in Idaho. To learn more about the ISU TES Department, please visit isu.edu/tes.