We’ve seen a lot in the decades since ELIC’s founding in 1981. But “More than forty years” is just a number. So let’s put those years of experience in context by looking at seven things ELIC has been around to see as they began.
ELIC launched before the Space Shuttle, but only by a couple of months. Columbia, the first space shuttle, launched for the first of the fleet’s 135 total missions on April 12, 1981. While these groundbreaking missions were repairing satellites and building the International Space Station, ELIC teachers were building communities—first in China and then expanding to countries all over Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.
Raiders of the Lost Ark hit the theaters on June 12, 1981. But before audiences watched Dr. Jones leave his Stateside classroom for adventures around the globe, ELIC was paving the way for teachers to leave the States for classrooms overseas. Indy has us beat for finding ancient artifacts, but we’ve discovered a far more valuable treasure in cross-cultural friendships all over the world.
The first issue of USA Today wasn’t printed until September of 1982. ELIC had already crossed the ocean when people all over the US were reading about a plane crash in Minnesota and a salesman’s failed attempt to get the White House on board with the water bed craze of the early 1980s. In the years since then, ELIC has sent more than 20,000 long-term and short-term teachers, easily outnumbering USA Today issues published in that same timeframe.
China is famous for its enormous population, but it didn’t hit the billion benchmark until 1982, a year after ELIC was founded. We are looking forward to the day we can say we’ve reached a billion students! And it has been a joy to help equip each one of the over two million students who’ve already filled our classrooms over the years.
January 1, 1983 is widely considered the birthday of the internet. The technology existed before this but was limited to smaller individual networks. 1983 was the first time cross-network connection became possible, making the internet a more universally helpful tool. The first ELIC teachers moved across the world from everyone they’d ever known with only limited communication. We’ve watched the internet revolutionize how teachers connect with the friends and family who support them from their passport countries.
Walking on the actual moon was before our time, but ELIC was already teaching overseas when Michael Jackson premiered his famous moonwalk dance on the TV show “Motown 25—Yesterday, Today, Forever” for an audience of 47 million viewers. Iconic pieces of American culture, like Michael Jackson’s music, have made their way into English Speaking Culture classes in many countries where ELIC sends teachers.
1985 was the first time Microsoft users could visually navigate computer programs by clicking and opening “windows” rather than typing commands. But years before Windows was released, classroom doors were already open to welcome ELIC teachers to equip students in China. We’ve seen our experience grow and our reach expand right along with the technological developments of the past several decades.
ELIC has been around to watch some amazing developments, both in our work and in the world, since 1981. As educators, we know that there is always room to grow, and we’re excited to keep learning from our students and their beautiful cultures for many years to come.
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