After a brief summer study abroad in Kosovo, Alessandra Santarosa knew she wanted to return.

“For a lot of people, when you tell them about Kosovo, they think of the conflict and the war that happened there. But everything changes so quickly there because it’s developing and the people are just so welcoming,” she said. 

Two years later, when the Youngstown, New York native came across a Peace Corps program in Kosovo, she lunged at the opportunity. Within weeks of graduating from Rochester Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s in political science, she was on a flight headed east for several months of training.  

While it took time to get familiar with the Albanian language, Santarosa had a little help.

“It was very difficult but because you’re living with a host family, they really help you,” she said. “All of the little kids on my street would sit with me and the other volunteers to help us with our homework. They really want us to learn the language but because Albanian is an isolated language, there’s really nothing like it.” 

Santarosa has worked with a local educator to co-teach first and fifth through ninth graders English. She says the differences in the education system make it difficult to judge the student’s abilities.  

“A lot of it was about using student-centered learning— which is what we use here in the U.S.— whereas they’re more teacher-centered,” she explained. “So, the kids kind of just sit in the classroom and listen to the teacher talk and it’s like you either get it or you don’t.” 

To help students, she implements practices that aim to bring them back to speed. Some of the practices are as simple as writing on the classroom chalkboard. 

“A lot of the teachers don’t have a lot of resources, or they have the resources but they don’t know what to do with them. My job was to evaluate what we have, what my counterpart wants to do and see what I could help her do,” Santarosa added. 

Since joining the classroom in September, she’s helped students create a “conversation club.” It’s a space that allows children to take an active role in shaping their learning. 

“They would all watch a movie and have to talk about the plot of it or we would go over song lyrics,” she said. “Watching my students grow overtime and seeing how far they’ve come just from September to February has been amazing!”

While the remainder of her two-year service program is still up in the air due to the coronavirus pandemic, the western New Yorker says it’s already given her an idea of where she hopes to go next in her career. 

“I really liked the community aspect of the Peace Corps. Some individuals go in [to post grad service] thinking ‘I want to do this and I want to do that,’ but I didn’t have any big picture goals in terms of what I wanted to do in my community,” Santarosa reflected. “I felt like it was really up to my community to say what they wanted and then I was there to facilitate that. I think that’s the type of role I would want to be in the future in terms of planning to meet a community’s needs instead of me walking in and saying ‘We’re doing this and you’re going to benefit from it.’”