Poole ’79, ’97 Teaches Math in Africa

Life on the move is the career path chosen by L. Douglas Poole BSc Geol ’79, MSc Math ’97.

He teaches at the International Community School of Abidjan (ICSA) in Ivory Coast, but his adventure started 10 years ago teaching in Guam. "After Guam, I moved to Kinshasa in the Congo, then to Singapore. Before coming to Abidjan, I was in a small mountain village in Switzerland for a year," he says.

In Abidjan, Poole teaches calculus and physics to high school seniors and algebra to eighth graders. "ICSA has an American-based curriculum," he explains, "Basically it is like any school in the states, except we have all grades, K-12, on one campus and all students are required to take French [the main language in Ivory Coast, once a French colony]."

Poole teaches in English and says ICSA caters to the expatriate community in Abidjan. "We have 470 students from about 50 different countries. I would guess that there are about 50 to 60 Americans in our student body," he says. "The faculty is mostly American and Ivorian."

Poole has always enjoyed traveling, he says, and thinks that teaching abroad is a great way to see the world. "Teaching in international schools has given me the chance to see many different places and meet a lot of interesting people." And, he adds, his education at Mines "gave me an excellent background in mathematics and sciences."

A good way to find an international teaching position is to attend one of the job fairs held in February in various cities across the United States and Europe.

Educators and administrators from all over the world attend the fairs looking for personnel. "It is very exciting and things happen quickly," says Poole. "It is not uncommon to get two or three job offers in one afternoon in as many different countries. You must make a decision to go to a place you may know little about to work with people you don’t know at all in a short amount of time. But it is hard to go wrong. I have found the international community of educators to be a wonderful group of people."

Whenever Poole gets the chance, he travels. "Last year for our winter break, I went to Mali with three other teachers from my school," he says. "The highlight of the trip was a three-day journey down the Niger River from Mopti to Timbuktu on a motorized pinasse [boat].

I have also taken the train from Abidjan to Ouagadougou and spent a few days traveling around Ghana, mostly in very crowded minivans, which do not run on a schedule, but leave ‘when full’."

Poole doesn’t know how long he will stay in Abidjan, maybe four or five years. "However, in Africa so many things can happen that one never makes definite plans," he says. "Also, another opportunity might arise in a place I would really like to go to. Who knows?" Poole does plan to retire to the United States one day. But, as he says, "That is a long way off yet."

Mines Magazine, September/October 1999