St. Pius X has a new globe-trotting English teacher, Mr. Joe Johnson.
Mr. Johnson previously taught at both Woodward Academy and the International School of Dakar in Senegal with his wife, who is a school administrator.
“My wife is originally from Guyana, South America, and always wanted to go to other places and teach. We decided when [our two younger daughters] graduated from Woodward in 2018 that we wanted to teach abroad,” Mr. Johnson said.
They decided on Senegal, a country in West Africa, as their new home for the next five years.
“That was the first time I stepped foot on African soil, so I didn’t know what to expect,” Mr. Johnson said. “I didn’t understand the language. They speak French there, and the local people speak a language called Wolof, so the communication was difficult at first, but it turned out to be the greatest experience.”
He said that the International School of Dakar had kids from all over the world, not just Africa.
“There were kids from 65 different countries, so every day you were learning about different cultures, different languages. I had a class of 14 kids from 11 different countries,” Mr. Johnson said.
While there, Mr. Johnson coached the boys basketball and girls volleyball teams. Unlike in America, school sports regions in Africa consist of multiple countries, and while traveling to compete against other schools, kids and coaches often stay with a host family.
“The host country would take kids into their homes and you would spend the night,” Mr. Johnson said. “It was incredibly cool. Our team traveled to Ghana to play in the tournament for boys basketball, and then with the girls we traveled to Lagos, Nigeria to play our tournament.”
Mr. Johnson said his time in Senegal was one of the best experiences he ever had and that he gained so much perspective.
He explained that because of teaching in Dakar, he now has friends from all around the world.
“One of the other great things is you have this wealth of people that you become friends with and have all kinds of various experiences that you can pull from in order to do the things,” Mr. Johnson said.
He also learned a lot from his students.
“Being able to interact with those kids and their families and the different cultures, you’re able to overcome a lot of biases and stereotypes that you might have, that you will have unless you go and experience other countries and people.”
In some ways, Mr. Johnson’s experience abroad taught him more about life than what he taught his students.
“You just strip away a lot of those stereotypes,” Mr. Johnson said. “And just get to know people.”
