A desire to go somewhere, help people and see the world prompted Avery Vega to join the Peace Corps in Nepal.
Vega, a George H.W. Bush New Tech Odessa and University of Texas at Austin graduate, will leave in June.
Since graduating with a degree in business management (consulting and change management), Vega has been substitute teaching at Goddard Junior High and Legacy High School in Midland.
“It’s been a lot of fun being in classrooms and then interacting with both administration and students has been pretty rewarding,” Vega said.
Getting to know the students has been “super rewarding.”
Ultimately his five-year plan was to work in third-party education consulting.
“I think there’s a lot of shortcomings in parts of education that is hard to deal with on a direct level as in from the school districts. I think a lot of times there are these great support groups outside of school districts in the government that help improve those things, so I wanted to do that,” he said.
He interviewed with several different companies and most of them said they were looking for someone with experience in education and the education system.
“I wanted to go ahead and start seeing what it’s like being on both ends of that — being the teacher as well. My dad and my uncle had gone through similar things. My dad did missionary work through the church and my uncle was in the Peace Corps in the Philippines. They had been telling me about that experience and going to another country, helping people and seeing more of the world, seeing more cultures, making you a well rounded individual, as well as having some direct impact on a lot of things that people kind of tend to forget about or push aside,” he said.
He looked into education opportunities and a couple of different programs. The Peace Corps was the most interesting.
“I ended up going in that direction because I wanted to get more experience in the education spheres, even if it’s going to be a little bit different. But then, B, seeing more of the world, helping a lot of people …,” Vega said.
“There’s only so many things that you can know through reading, or being told a story, or those kinds of things. I think there are a lot of things you can only know if you experience it and that’s something that I wanted to experience,” he added.
The assignment will be for two years. He’ll spend three months in Nepal, which will be spent in the capital of Kathmandu undergoing language training. Vega will live in a family’s house.
It will be like going to school again, but only learning Nepali and “some teaching stuff specifically in their area.”
After that, he could end up in one of three other towns.
He’ll be teaching several grades at once.
“They typically provide housing. They partner with local families then generally they’ll pay them a stipend, or they will also pay me a stipend if I choose to live by myself. But generally they have approved residential areas, those kind of things,” Vega said.
Everything is taught in English, he said, so he’ll be speaking a mixture of English and Nepali.
“English speaking is relatively good over there, but the language is Nepali,” Vega said.
He graduated from UT at age 20, so he thought it would be good to do something like this.
His teaching experience in Midland should help.
“I’ve had a decent amount of experience in ESL classrooms since I’ve been subbing, so I’m already kind of working on that English-ESL. Of course, this is Spanish vs. Nepali and there’s going to be cultural differences, of course. I don’t know how much those cultural differences are going to change the structure … I … think there’s something quintessential that is part of teaching that no matter who you’re teaching, or what you’re teaching, or what culture that relaying of information is still the same. I think all the work that I’ve done here is going to prepare me reasonably well, but you can only go so far,” he said.
Going to NTO which has project-based learning taught Vega things that are useful in life in general such has working in teams, navigating the dynamics of a team and getting along with people.
UT also was beneficial.
“I had some fantastic teachers that I learned a lot about management and other people in the workplace and what you need to do to make yourself stand out, to improve a system as a whole,” Vega said.
A lot of the focus in his degree was on human resource roles and change and what it takes to move an organization.
“I think all of those things are things that on a small scale I’m using in my classrooms. Like I said … I’ll get certain kids over and over again. There’s kind of an expectation based around me being a sub now and I’ve had teachers tell me, ‘So many of my kids get work done in your class vs they normally wouldn’t with normal sub.’ A lot of those tools I got from UT,” Vega said.
He said the education level in Nepal from what he’s been told really depends on where you live.
Vega said he has done some research into Nepal and listened to a lot of Peace Corps experiences.
“I think my dad (Adrian Vega) has been doing more research than I have. I don’t want to taint my experience with other people’s experiences, so there’s some basic stuff I’ve been learning. I’ve looked a lot into food … but I think, like I said earlier, there are things you have to experience yourself and I want to go and experience those things,” he said.
