Teaching to Learn
TIRPers teach IR in local high schools
By Kaitlin Solimine
Spring 2005
The comments from student volunteers in USC’s Teaching
International Relations Program (TIRP) play like a broken, albeit
cheerful, record: “The funny thing I’ve found,” they all say in one way
or another, “is that through teaching international relations, I
actually learn the concepts even better.”
The brainchild of Professor Steven Lamy, director of the USC College
School of International Relations, TIRP was founded over a decade ago
with the intention of teaching international relations (IR) to local
high school students to provide them with a basic understanding of
international studies and foreign policy. However, as most of the
“TIRPers”—undergraduate volunteer-teachers who teach in Los Angeles
area high schools—are IR students themselves, the concepts they teach
directly relate to their studies. As a result, these USC students have
become the program’s backbone.
“TIRP is truly student-run,” says Teresa Hudock, director of the USC
Center for Active Learning in International Studies (CALIS), the
organization that oversees TIRP.
The value of TIRP for the program’s volunteers becomes clear in a
classroom 10 miles north of USC’s campus: three TIRPers look on as
groups of high school students role play nation-states.
One TIRPer warns a group acting as Brazil: “you have to consider inflation.”
“What’s inflation?” asks one of the students.
The TIRP volunteer pauses to think, cautious not to confuse the student with this new idea, then slowly comes to an explanation.
After spending an hour in a TIRP-taught classroom, the outreach impact
on local schools is readily apparent. In recent years, the program has
annually served over 2,000 area high school students—and these are
students who are rarely exposed to IR studies in their regular
coursework. However, it is the more than 200 USC undergraduate
volunteers who teach weekly in the classrooms that are most often
surprised by the benefits they reap.
IR major Kristen Taylor says that volunteering for TIRP has made her
more actively engage her mind with topics and concepts covered in her
classes at USC. “I am thrilled to have the ability to share what I’ve
been learning, because I’ve realized that the best way to learn about
something is to teach it to others,” she says.
The span of topics covered, such as globalization, also relate directly
to the daily lives of high school students. “Part of our goal is
to show students how multinational organizations and international
policies affect their everyday lives,” says Devin Llopis, a freshman
majoring in IR and a TIRP program coordinator.
Engaging the students on such accessible topics is invaluable, and
often proves one of the most fruitful ways both sets of students learn.
Angie Salazar volunteers in one of TIRP’s Spanish language courses for
immigrant students where she finds that these high schoolers frequently
share anecdotes or experiences that relate directly to the material at
hand. Last year, the program served over 200 Spanish-speaking high
school students.
“In one session, a student from El Salvador talked about textile
factories in his hometown owned by Asian companies that paid workers
very little and provided no benefits. Without knowing the technical
terms, this students was defining comparative advantage and labor
exploitation.” (Two concepts recently taught in Salazar’s IR class.)
And so, this learning process comes full circle.
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