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A year abroad can really change one’s perspective, Mike Yunghans said.
The Kansas City, Kan., native and Piper High School graduate was for a year and a half a resident of Mauritania, a West African country just south of Morocco in the middle of the Sahara Desert. There he was an English teacher in a small town high school. His wife, Katie, was a volunteer in a community medical clinic.
They were both stationed in there strating in 2008 as part of the Peace Corps, until worries over political instability and threats to westerners caused them to exit prematurely.
He said there are some obvious differences between Kansas and Mauritania — the heat, the culture, language and the fact that, according to the United Nations Development Program, about 20 percent of the population lives on about $1.25 a day — but Yunghans said he also discovered some common ground among many of the people who lived there, once the culture shock wore off.
“I think that’s the main goal of the Peace Corps is not our need to travel but it’s a chance to share and develop relationships with somebody you’d never get to meet otherwise,” he said.
To this day, Yunghans said he and his wife stay in touch with several of the native people they while stationed in Mauritania.
The experience provided Yunghans some skills that have come in handy in his newest job, teaching both one-on-one guitar lessons and English as a second language courses at the Carnegie Arts Center, where he began working this year.
Chief among those skills is obviously how to teach English to non-native speakers — he said translation should be a last resort and that pictures often help — but he also said he took away some general lessons that have helped him along the way.
“Adapting very quickly to situations that might arise — that’s one skill that you develop — that you have to develop,” he said.
In addition to his experience at the school in Mauritania, Yunghans has a degree in musical education from Baker University, where his instrument of emphasis was the guitar. He is currently enrolled as a student in the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s music conservatory, finishing a master of music degree with a concentration in business technology.
Though his training is mostly as a musician — that’s the position he said he applied for initially — it was his experience teaching in Mauritania in teaching English that had the Carnegie staff interested.
A year abroad can really change one’s perspective, Mike Yunghans said.
The Kansas City, Kan., native and Piper High School graduate was for a year and a half a resident of Mauritania, a West African country just south of Morocco in the middle of the Sahara Desert. There he was an English teacher in a small town high school. His wife, Katie, was a volunteer in a community medical clinic.
They were both stationed in there strating in 2008 as part of the Peace Corps, until worries over political instability and threats to westerners caused them to exit prematurely.
He said there are some obvious differences between Kansas and Mauritania — the heat, the culture, language and the fact that, according to the United Nations Development Program, about 20 percent of the population lives on about $1.25 a day — but Yunghans said he also discovered some common ground among many of the people who lived there, once the culture shock wore off.
“I think that’s the main goal of the Peace Corps is not our need to travel but it’s a chance to share and develop relationships with somebody you’d never get to meet otherwise,” he said.
To this day, Yunghans said he and his wife stay in touch with several of the native people they while stationed in Mauritania.
The experience provided Yunghans some skills that have come in handy in his newest job, teaching both one-on-one guitar lessons and English as a second language courses at the Carnegie Arts Center, where he began working this year.
Chief among those skills is obviously how to teach English to non-native speakers — he said translation should be a last resort and that pictures often help — but he also said he took away some general lessons that have helped him along the way.
“Adapting very quickly to situations that might arise — that’s one skill that you develop — that you have to develop,” he said.
In addition to his experience at the school in Mauritania, Yunghans has a degree in musical education from Baker University, where his instrument of emphasis was the guitar. He is currently enrolled as a student in the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s music conservatory, finishing a master of music degree with a concentration in business technology.
Though his training is mostly as a musician — that’s the position he said he applied for initially — it was his experience teaching in Mauritania in teaching English that had the Carnegie staff interested.
“I mentioned that and they said what a coincidence because they were looking for someone to take on the ESL classes,” he said.
Yunghans admitted that he knew little of the Carnegie before he applied for a job there but the facility has so far been a good fit.
“I wish I would have known about it,” he said. “Because it’s a very cool place.”
At the Carnegie, teachers propose the classes they would like to teach. Yunghans said he was encouraged to turn in proposals for ESL and guitar. But in addition, he said he has proposed starting a “rock band” class in which participants would learn an instrument, write songs and perform a “gig,” instead of a final recital. While the idea is somewhat different from the piano and woodwind lessons at the Carnegie, Yunghans said the class as he proposed would teach many of the same lessons, and others — like how to play as part of an ensemble.
“So many students come in for lessons and don’t get any opportunity to play with other students, especially in the pop music world,” he said.
As of now, Yunghans said he is still looking for students to begin that class.
Yunghans said he is also looking outside of the Carnegie to teach guitar students. In his spare time, he said he has been working on a method book for the insrtument. But unlike most such books, he said his idea is to make something for all ability levels, from beginner on up.
“It would be a kind of thing where you could kind of explore the book at your discretion,” he said.
Yunghans said he intends to stay for now at the Carnegie after he graduates, in about a semester. But, using those skills from Mauritania again, he said he is trying to be flexible about long-term goals.
“I suppose my dream would be to one day have my own studio,” he said.
