Gail vonHahmann

In the United States, Gail has directed the Rural School Empowerment Program a State University of New York AmeriCorps program and as Vice President, Field Services, managed training delivery for a U.S. national literacy organization. As Family Advocate, Schoharie County Child Development Program, Cobleskill, NY, she served as liaison to 40 families of HeadStart children. She has been adjunct faculty member at graduate and undergraduate levels at School for International Training, the State University of New York (Cobleskill and Oneonta) and was Visiting Lecturer at Center for International Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  She substitute taught in primary, secondary and special needs classrooms in rural upstate New York.

Since first observing Jane Vella teach in 1977, her teaching style has gradually become re-grounded in dialogue.  She has enjoyed introducing dialogue education to individual trainers and to training organizations in the United States, Cambodia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Liberia.  “The Principles and Practices of Dialogue Education always form the basis of any advising or designing I do for training teachers or frontline community workers.  It’s just ingrained and always relevant, of course!”

Gail has her doctorate in Adult Non-Formal Education from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) and a Master’s in Intercultural Management from the School for International Training (Brattleboro, VT). She has presented at several international conferences on service learning and on measuring teacher and learner performance and has published in The International Journal on School Disaffection (2008) and Dialogue Education at Work (Vella, 2003) and has produced several manuals on community-based education.