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Rarely has Matt Hajdun’s path been
the one offering the best financial or physical security, but as a
teacher in challenging environments both at home and abroad since
graduation, he has made a difference for children who need him,
which makes him happy.
This year, Hajdun ’05, who was a
biology and elementary education major, is back among
the Saint Michael’s community, where his personal mission of service
through teaching evolved. He’s working on a master’s degree in
education in the evenings after spending days as a much-loved
teacher of fourth and fifth graders at Burlington’s Champlain
Elementary School.
As a MOVE volunteer during his
undergraduate days, Hajdun worked in India and Costa Rica among the
poorest of the poor, and after graduation he taught a year at a
Honduran orphanage, and then at an inner-city program in Connecticut
for immigrant English-language learners. He returned to Vermont when
a job opened at Champlain. The staff at the school really wanted him
to return after his experience as a student teacher there in 2005.
“Last year, I was in New Britain,
Connecticut, teaching bilingual, low-income, second-language
learners,” he said. “Following my student teaching at Champlain, I
went to Hinesburg half a year, taught fifth and sixth grade, then
from there did a full year in Honduras,” he said. Since he had
studied abroad in Costa Rica while a Saint Michael’s student, he
knew he wanted to go back to Latin America. “I’m getting close to
fluent in Spanish,” he added.
Hajdun worked part-time as MOVE’s
assistant director when he was a senior and joined a Christmas break
trip to India to join Mother Teresa’s work, which gave him important
perspective on life. “That definitely influenced me to go to
Honduras later,” he said. “It was eye-opening. After going somewhere
for three weeks it’s easy to see all the things that are wrong but
not really long enough to do much about it, and I realized I needed
to go somewhere for a longer period of time.”
In Honduras he was director of a
private K-9 school with 102 students. “Basically I worked at an
orphanage, with half our students being from the orphanage and half
members of the local community. It was trial by fire.” He taught
fifth and sixth grade (in Spanish), trained and supervised teachers
and planned school-wide events.
He said immersion in the practice of
connecting service to learning while he was a Saint Michael’s
student “was a big benefit for me. This community aspect here is
really something that I valued and I don’t think you see it much in
other spots.
“I think we have one of the best
elementary education programs out there,” he said. “My senior year,
two departments, biology and education, let me design my own senior
research so I could come up with inquiry-based science models, and I
still use all of those in my teaching.”
Working on his master’s has kept him
involved with the college even more than just by maintaining
connections with friends and former professors. “It’s such a
supportive community at Saint Michael’s. Even after you leave, if
you take advantage of it, there’s such a network of alumni out
there,” he said. |
