Volunteers in the past have taught at the elementary, middle, and high school levels on Karkar. In 2009, volunteers will serve only at the middle and high school levels, as we've found our English expertise to be more effective in teaching more advanced grades. Or focus is primarily on teaching English, but in the past volunteers have responded to the request of schools (and their own personal preferences) to teach math, science, and even economics as well.
Panango requires no prior teaching experience. It provides its volunteers with a few weeks of teacher training in the spring before sending them into a Karkar classroom, but an important part of a volunteer's training comes on the job. While no formal "mentoring" system is in place, in the past, volunteers have been able to form strong bonds with teachers at their schools and in many cases form such "mentoring" relationships. Experienced PNG teachers provide valuable guidance for our volunteers in the classroom, while the teachers have reported that watching our volunteers' interactive teaching methods have been valuable for their own teaching.
Depending on the school, past volunteers had various amounts of oversight in scripting their lesson plans. Volunteers are not supplied with lesson plans or syllabi from either Panango or school teachers. The PNG government issues a broad set of curriculum objectives, but it is unaccompanied by supplemental teaching texts or syllabi. Teachers are thus free to improvise--rather, forced to do so--in order to meet end-of-the-year objectives. Panango volunteers will do likewise. This can be a very liberating or very frustrating system, but in the past, it has allowed ample freedom for volunteers to assess where they could make the most impact and tailor creative lessons to do so. Resources are usually limited to chalk and a chalkboard, possibly a few outdated textbooks, students' notebooks, and the tea kettle plus whatever spices you can scrounge from your kitchen for science lessons.