Every year during the week surrounding March 1st — the anniversary of the inception of the Peace Corps in 1961 — thousands of returned volunteers enter classrooms to share their stories and experiences overseas with US students. This March, thousands of returned Peace Corps volunteers participated in classrooms and Peace Corps Week education celebrations across the country.

Peace Corps Week is an opportunity for returned Volunteers to partake in promoting cross-cultural understanding, world peace, and friendship by shining a spotlight on the important work of our Volunteers around the world and the continuing service that returned Volunteers bring to communities in the United States.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and English Teacher, Ms. Vanessa Walling-Sisi, shared her Peace Corps experience with students at Armijo High School. Her presentation focused on The Kingdom of Tonga, where she spent two years as an education volunteer. She talks to her own students regularly about her life as a volunteer and life in Tonga, and in March she shared with other students as well.

While in the Kingdom of Tonga, Vanessa Walling-Sisi worked as a Primary School Teacher Trainer. She facilitated workshops with Tongan teachers to implement a new English curriculum nationwide. In Tonga every child must master academic English by 6 th grade in order to continue on to secondary school. Since this island nation has no printing press of their own, all of the school textbooks are printed in New Zealand, Australia or Hawaii. Thus, their courses must all be taught in English.

Her first year of service was on the main island of Tongatapu and her second year was on the isolated island of Niuatoputapu. Most of Ms. Walling-Sisi’s presentation focused on the language and culture of Tonga. She shared photos of the islands, the foods, feasts and images of everyday life. The stories she shared were meant to help Armijo students connect to and understand the shared values between seemingly different cultures. She used humor and shared anecdotes of her experiences with culture shock and her eventual successful acculturation. Her presentation ended with a brief Tongan language lesson and translation (or Tonganized pronunciation) of the audience members’ names. She has been doing Peace Corps Presentations for 25 years.