Excerpt from Letter of 24 February 2006 from Nick Eastmond to members of the
online class ED 6550 (edited for use here)
To begin with, I need to give you some details about ITEP. Here is my view of it, after
doing the work we have done so far: ITEP is as ingenious a way of providing in-service
training to the teachers in the LDS Church schools in the 4 islands of the South Pacific.
Just as the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC) is an ingenious addition to BYU Hawaii,
ITEP adds an ingenious new dimension to the operation of these schools. The PCC
provides student employment, reinforces the cultural values of students from the islands,
and finances the education of many students who could otherwise not afford to come to
college. ITEP uses the volunteer efforts of carefully selected missionary couples, picked
because either husband or wife or both had a career in public or higher education. They
are called as missionaries to come to one of these islands, spend 18 or 24 months
providing in-service training through classes to a high school or middle school staff.
While doing so, they serve as role models for teaching practice, as well as resources
persons as native speakers of English. The program is financed almost entirely by the
retirement savings of these missionary couples, who pay a certain sum each month to
cover expenses. The Church provides the couples with the money for transportation to
and from the islands, but the couple covers the cost of their housing, their meals, and any
incidentals.
From what I have seen, I believe that these seniors are effective. They know how to
teach, because they have done it for all of their working lives. They have considerable
experience to draw upon, and they can bring ideas from the USA to these schools far out
in the Pacific. There are sometimes problems matching up the talents of the couples with
the needs of the people they are serving, but both the couples and the school
administration seem to be remarkably adept at finding meaningful classes for these
seniors to teach and plenty of work for them to do.
At some point, health or other concerns will make the person too old to be an effective
ITEP missionary. And if not used, their knowledge will get out-of-date. But for a least a
decade after retirement, if the couple’s health holds up, this is a remarkable way to
provide a knowledge transfer from the American school system to the South Pacific. The
ITEP couples we have met have been incredibly talented, for example, the Bradys,
working at the Vaiola H.S. in Sava’ai, Samoa: he a retired professor of Special
Education from San Diego State University and his wife the former sparkplug for a
nonprofit foundation in California placing disabled individuals in meaningful supported
work. Or the Youngs, a couple from Oregon, he having served as a professor of
education at a community college and his wife having worked as a medical secretary in a
surgical ward for 25 years. Or the Boyces, he having worked as CEO of a company
producing playground equipment and she having worked as a university professor at
USU’s Early Intervention Research Center. The Boyces are working in an experimental
way, moving from island to island, staying 4-6 months in each place, providing
workshops on teaching English across the curriculum during the day and providing dance
instruction, like square dancing, conducted in English, during the evenings. The Boyces
are a couple we had known from Logan; the others are people we have met since coming
here. All three couples are extremely talented people. I am not sure that any
organization could afford to hire the people to work like they do or for as long as they do.
It is a remarkable use of volunteer labor.