[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.]

Ataro Alice has been teaching for more than ten years. Currently, she works at Lacor Secondary School teaching geography and history. She remembers growing up in northern Uganda when the LRA was still actively abducting children. Traveling home to her village in Atiak during school breaks was impossible because it was unsafe.

Growing up in a poor family, Alice was the second youngest of six siblings. As a child she remembers being very quiet and reserved, something that has changed over the years. “Now I am comfortable and enjoy meeting people and talking.”

She is also ready to experience new things in North America.

“I am interested to see the traffic jams in New York City, the wheat growing in the prairies, the Great Lakes,” she lists some of the sites she hopes to see during the Reciprocal Teacher Exchange this December. “As I go there I want to share the geography of my place and the nature of our students and school system.”

Alice is obviously well-loved by the students at her school as someone who is comfortable relating to them on their level. During a physical education class, she is quick to join in the fun for a game of jump rope, to the delight and amusement of the children.

Alice jumps into the fun during a physical education class at Lacor SS

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.