Foreign Service Institute Courses: From Student to Teacher

An Overview of Foreign Service Institute Courses

The Foreign Service Institute is a sprawling complex located in Arlington, VA where Diplomats go to school.  It is here that they may enroll in over 600 different Foreign Service Institute courses in leadership, job-specific training, area studies and most commonly, language courses.  Amazingly, there are over 70 languages being taught there each year with courses ranging in length from a few weeks to 1 year.

In addition to preparing the officers to go overseas, there are also specific courses geared at getting the spouse/partner and family ready.  These Foreign Service Institute Courses fall under a different umbrella of the Institute called the Transition Center.  It is here that spouses take classes in security preparedness, raising bilingual children, preparing for pack-out and much, much more.  These classes were sanity-savers for me when we joined, so you can imagine my delight when I was presented with the opportunity to co-lead one of these classes for spouses!

The View from the Front of the Room

The class I got asked to co-lead was a full-day course called Portable Careers: Employment Options for Family Members.  This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as it causes many an identity issue for spouses who have to abandon their location-specific career to support their Diplomat partner.  The class is meant to help spouses explore all the career opportunities available to them – from working on the local market, to being a professional volunteer, to teleworking or running a portable business – so that they may create a successful and fulfilling career alongside their spouse.

I came in at a time when they were revamping the content for this class, so I got to inject a lot of coaching-related material that provided opportunities for assessment and reflection.  Specifically, I created a workbook that helped participants look back at their prior roles and life experiences to recognize not only their job-related skills, but the ones they also picked up as an athlete, mother or volunteer (among many others).  The class was evenly split between this reflective work and more information-driven presentations from SCORE and veteran individuals who had successfully created portable careers.

The feedback I received indicated that the material was both useful and presented in a way that was fun and engaging.  While there were a few individuals that were on 2nd or 3rd tours, the majority were fresh recruits.  I remember all too well the overwhelm that accompanies those first few months.  I hope our class was able to remind them that they aren’t leaving everything behind, they are simply being called to use their skills and passions in new ways!