Teachers Exchange Language and Culture Through The Visiting International Faculty Program

Teachers from all over the world go to the U.S. to gain skills, knowledge and experience to bring back to their homeland through the Visiting International Faculty (VIF) program. The VIF program also helps fill in the teacher shortage for English-language learners.

VIF has brought in more than 12,000 teachers from 77 countries to schools in the U.S. in the past three decades. Around 56 teachers in Prince William County alone came to the U.S. through the VIF program, which helps teachers from around the world to find work as a world-language or general education teacher.

The program was designed to help students who have never traveled outside the U.S. be exposed to global perspectives, according to David Young, chief executive of VIF International Education. It also offers teachers the chance to work in the U.S. e

Founded in 1998, the company was started by Young's parents who grew up exposed to a vast array of cultures. The mission was to expand students' exposure to world cultures, according to Migrant Teachers' Rights.

Although VIF began as a language exchange program for teachers, many schools began to use the agency to fill in U.S. teacher shortages in difficult staff subjects. VIF began to refocus the company's core function to fill in the much-needed gap.

Teachers serve as cultural ambassadors to their host schools and communities. Young explains that he hopes VIF teachers will gain skills and knowledge in U.S. perspectives back to their homeland. Teachers are allowed to work for five years before going home, according to Washington Post.

For example, teacher Pablo Giudici recently moved to Virginia leaving begin a long teaching career in Argentina. Giudici took his family with him from a suburb in Buenos Aires to the County of Prince William.

Teachers such as Giudici are helping to fill the need for English teachers as the population of students who need to learn the language has doubled in the past decade. In Potomac View Elementary in Woodbridge, Virginia alone, two-thirds of the students come from Latin American countries who need to learn the English language.

Students show up at school within days or weeks of their arrival in the U.S. Since the adjustment is extremely difficult having to deal with a new language, new people and longer school days, teachers like Giudici help make the transition easier.