- February 10, 2023
Eyosias Gebremeskel, a senior in materials science and EECS, shared his passion for science with students in Kazakhstan through MISTI Eurasia Global Teaching Labs (GTL).
In January 2023, he taught a mix of materials science, chemistry, and electrical engineering to students from Year 7 to Year 9 at Haileybury Almaty, a private British curriculum school in Kazakhstan. Some of the topics that he covered during his lessons were plastics, batteries, and sustainability.
“It was an absolute pleasure to share my passion for materials science and chemistry with the students at Haileybury Almaty through lessons made as engaging as possible through a wide range of practicals and demos,” Eyosias remembers.
He admits that his proudest moment was to witness his youngest student, who's eleven years old, get the concepts typically not included in the Year 7 curriculum but in university courses. “[This] moved me to push my limits daily in my classes and research,” he says.
Eyosias had his assumptions and expectations before entering the program even though he had taken the Soviet and Eurasian history class at MIT and self-studied Russian for several years—the language commonly used in Kazakhstan, along with Kazakh. “In many ways, Kazakhstan was an ideal country for my personal growth as it had an extremely good combination of the familiar and the novel.”
Haileybury Almaty’s staff and his host family made his adjustment to the local culture and lifestyle smooth and exciting. “The host family went above and beyond in welcoming and feeding me, showing me around the Almaty, and the list goes on—overall, just making my month in Kazakhstan as rewarding and enjoyable as possible,” he remembers.
During his time in Kazakhstan, he couldn’t help but compare its culture to Ethiopia's. “As my host family pushed themselves to make my living condition as comfortable as possible <…>, I was reminded of how my grandparents and parents in Ethiopia would do the same when they had guests in the house.”
“GTL and MISTI internship experiences are a phenomenal way to break out of the MIT social and intellectual bubble and push oneself to explore new ways of thought,” Eyosias shared. In confidence, Eyosias knows that he now has colleagues and lifelong friends across the world and hopes to visit Kazakhstan again in the future.
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Photo: Eyosias Gebremeskel in Kazakhstan in 2023. Photo by Haileybury Almaty.