Two professors from the department of teaching and learning will leave DeKalb around noon today to travel to Kenya to help train teachers.

The trip will be a continuation of work done by NIU professors to improve the standard of living and education in Mwala, a small village outside of Nairobi.

C. Sheldon Woods and Maylan Dunn, assistant professors of teaching and learning, will work to train pre-primary teachers in Mwala.

This is Dunn’s second trip to Kenya to take part in the project, and it is Woods’ first trip.

“It was an extremely rewarding experience,” Dunn said. “I had the opportunity to meet some amazing educators and community leaders.”

Dunn’s biggest concern is the large difference between the opportunities available to rural students and urban students in Kenya.

“A child growing up in Nairobi [an urban city] is not going to grow up much different than a child growing up in Chicago,” Dunn said. “A person could travel 30 minutes outside of Nairobi, however, and it is a whole different world.”

While new government leadership in Kenya guarantees free education at primary schools – first through eighth grade – the free schooling does not extend to pre-primary or high schools. The government funds salaries for teachers at the primary level, but they expect parents of pre-primary students to pay the teachers of their children.

Moses Mutuku, assistant professor of early childhood education, has studied the gap between rural and urban learning in his native country of Kenya since 2000.

Because of Mutuku’s work and others, they have been able to fix many of the water-related issues in Mwala and build a community library.

Mutuku is not going on the trip to Kenya today, but as the director of the project, he made all the arrangements, Dunn said.

“We are taking early education students in June to Kenya, where they will team up with students from Arizona State University,” she said. “They will be working in classrooms with teachers and children.”

NIU professors who have gone to Kenya bring supplies to teachers there, she said.

“I have a lot of admiration for the Kenyan people,” Dunn said.