{"id":18410,"date":"2018-01-12T15:06:40","date_gmt":"2018-01-12T20:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=18410"},"modified":"2018-01-12T15:06:40","modified_gmt":"2018-01-12T20:06:40","slug":"expertise-heart-and-passion-lisa-bennett-05","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/expertise-heart-and-passion-lisa-bennett-05\/","title":{"rendered":"Expertise, Heart and Passion: Lisa Bennett \u201905"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lisa<\/a>
\nBack in the early 2000s, Lisa Bennett was a secondary education major at Clemson who had no way of knowing that one of her coworkers at a video rental store would go on to found one of the most successful educator development organizations in Zambia. Lusungu Sibande was just another employee in the trenches with Bennett, restocking DVDs and keeping a \u201cnaughty\u201d list of late video returners.
\nLusungu and her sister, Kondi, started A to Zed<\/a> in 2006 and immediately invited Bennett to travel to Zambia with them. In 2016 Bennett was finally able to join the sisters, offering her abilities as an educator to help teachers in Zambia through professional development workshops. She became an instant believer, making plans to return in summer 2018.
\n[pullquote]\u201cI enjoyed helping teachers address what they may be lacking in classrooms,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cIt\u2019s very fulfilling to help them put proven methods into practice, and we can\u2019t wait to go back.\u201d And, she adds, \u201cLusungu and Kondi made me part of their family and an honorary Zambian citizen.\u201d[\/pullquote]
\nBennett worked with teachers and students in grades 5-9, but her work wasn\u2019t confined to the classroom. A to Zed also tackles service-learning projects, such as helping teachers and students raise and sell crops, the proceeds of which get put back into schools. Members of A to Zed also found time to host a field day for Matthew 25, a local orphanage.
\nBennett said the experience made her realize just how much the hardworking people of Zambia accomplish with limited resources. One teacher she observed used a single book and no other reading or writing materials to effectively teach a class of 40 students.
\nThat experience taught Bennett an important lesson about the role of teachers: \u201cIn the end, it\u2019s about me and what I have to give, and that\u2019s expertise, heart and passion,\u201d she said. This summer, she\u2019ll take these talents back to teach \u2014 and learn \u2014 from the educators of Zambia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the early 2000s, Lisa Bennett was a secondary education major at Clemson who had no way of knowing that one of her coworkers at a video rental store would go on to found one of the most successful educator development organizations in Zambia. Lusungu Sibande was just another employee in the trenches with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":18492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[994,2312,2925,3317,3318,3442],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-18410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","tag-diversity","tag-professional-development","tag-teaching","tag-winter-2018","tag-winter-2018-alumni-profiles","tag-zambia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/01\/Lisa-Bennett.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18410"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=18410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}