The USA Internship provides student-teachers and young teachers from the South African Extraordinary Schools Coalition with a one-month residency in a school in the United States. Through the internship, American and South African teachers share best teaching practices, form mentoring relationships, and collaborate on strategies to bring about equality in education in both countries.
The US Internship is an annual programme to which pre-service interns can apply for a fully sponsored month-long internship at a GTI partner school in the USA. Through the internship, American and South African teachers share best teaching practices, form mentoring relationships and collaborate on strategies to bring about equality in education in both countries. We expect interns to be open to confronting challenging situations and experiencing personal growth.
The core value of this programme is reciprocity. To this end, we seek interns who are as committed to learning and sharing as they are to teaching and learning throughout their participation in our programme. Additionally, we seek interns who want to incorporate what they learned during their time in the exchange into their own teaching practice and share those learnings within their home schools or beyond.
To structure the time Interns spend in school, we require that they complete an ‘Action Based Research Project’. The purpose of action research is to allow interns to systematically explore and improve an aspect of their teaching practice and deliberately and collect data that can help them improve their practice. They are paired with teachers who mentor and support them in their exploration, collection and analysis of information and help them conclude how they could improve their practice.
Aim
To facilitate an authentic platform for teachers from South Africa and the U.S. to learn from one another, improve their instructional practices, and shift the international engagement paradigm from one of “giving and taking” to co-creation and sharing.
Host Schools
Host schools in prior years have included:
- The Branson School
- Katherine Delmar Burke School
- Drew School
- The Hamlin School
- Kehillah Jewish High School
- Children’s Day School
- Frick Middle School
- High Tech High International (San Diego)
- Ralph J. Bunche High School
- KIPP SF Bay Academy
- Lick-Wilmerding High School
- Howard University Middle School of Math and Science (DC)
- Town School for Boys
