Section_ⅠWelcome_to_the_unit_&_Reading_-_Pre­reading

　　Have you ever been a volunteer? If so, can you tell your classmates your experience?

President John F. Kennedy began the program, Peace Corps, in 1961. The Peace Corps sends American volunteers to provide technical assistance in education and other areas in developing countries.

Amanda Pease is one of almost 40 volunteers serving in rural schools in Sierra Leone.

Science teachers are in especially short supply. Efforts in Sierra Leone to get more children through primary school have led to crowded high schools.

Amanda Pease is the only chemistry and physics teacher at her school. She says she has to work hard to get students more interested in learning, as she thought they would be.

"I had sort of a romantic idea coming to a developing country where everyone is super motivated but just does not have opportunities, and that is not exactly how it is. Not that I am saying the opportunities are so great, because of course there are limited opportunities if you compare it to America, but I think one of the biggest things is literally just motivation，" she says.

Ms. Pease teaches science at Saint Joseph's, a high school in eastern Sierra Leone. She studied chemical engineering at the University of Cali­

fornia, Los Angeles. She decided to serve for two years in the Peace Corps after she finished her degree.

"I was trying to decide between going the academic (学术的) route and doing a postdoctoral (博士后) degree and go into industry, and then I had been doing some volunteer work and the idea was always floating around，" she says.

Peace Corps volunteers left Sierra Leone in 1994 because of civil war. But now they are back.