While my work with the summer camp with American and Chinese students was a great opportunity for me to practice my teaching, it complements my work with OpenCurriculum in another way as well: it stands by a large part of the reason why I work for OpenCurriculum.

OpenCurriculum’s mission statement is to provide academic resources to be used in K-12 schools across the world. The italicized part is the most important in this scenario, because I had a chance to directly distribute my knowledge and teaching abilities to another part of the world. It is highly unlikely that I will be able to travel to China anytime soon, so I got to see firsthand what impact I was having on remote communities, and it is safe to say that it is a positive one.

All of the students thanked me for the time I had served helping them open their eyes to the true beauty of science, only reassuring that my work and effort are appreciated. It is things like that that keep me motivated to keep doing work for OpenCurriculum. Sure, it’s one more thing I can put on my college application, but when I take a step back and observe what difference I’ve made in the larger, international community, the satisfaction of helping others greatly exceeds the satisfaction of helping myself.