“It’s great to see students who start with lots of problems improving,” Drago Patrick, a mathematics and geography teacher at Gulu High School, says. By partner teaching with Teacher Exchange educators who have come to Uganda in the past, Patrick says that he has learned to be more patient with his students.

“It has changed my relationship with students,” he says. “ I’ve learned to put myself in the students’ situation.”

Patrick has been through enough challenges in his lifetime to give him the ability to identify with students from difficult backgrounds. Growing up in West Nile, he was forced to move to what was then Zaire because of war. Despite interruptions, he completed his studies and began teaching in 1993.

Patrick also is helping implement a government program to make mathematics more interactive in the Uganda curriculum. He sees great potential in moving away from traditional classroom practices and finding ways to engage students more.

On going to the U.S. with the Reciprocal Teacher Exchange, Patrick is looking forward to experiencing a classroom there, as well as winter weather. “You’ve been hearing people, seeing it in the movies, but being there will be so exciting.”

Patrick does the math in his classroom at Gulu High School

Invisible Children’s Reciprocal Teacher Exchange, now in its fourth year, provides Ugandan teachers with the opportunity to spend four weeks in the United States partner teaching in a North American classroom.

The Reciprocal Teacher Exchange has proven to make a remarkably formative impact on all of the Ugandan and North American students, teachers, principals and head teachers who take part in the program.

Join us in raising support for Ugandan teachers and Head Teachers to embark on a dynamic personal and professional journey to collaborate with teachers from the U.S.

[The Teacher Exchange is a program that allows Ugandan and international educators to form teaching partnerships while exposing their students to a world outside their borders. International educators team-teach in northern Uganda each summer for six weeks, and, in a reciprocal exchange, Ugandan educators visit the schools of the international educators each winter. Learn more here.]