Partly cloudy. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable..

Partly cloudy. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable.

Barbara Dennie, a Salem teacher and Gloucester resident, will be among the first volunteers to travel abroad as part of the Peace Corps following a mass evacuation at the start of the pandemic. She will teach children English in Colombia for two years.

Barbara Dennie, a Salem teacher and Gloucester resident, will be among the first volunteers to travel abroad as part of the Peace Corps following a mass evacuation at the start of the pandemic. She will teach children English in Colombia for two years.

Gloucester resident Barbara Dennie will be one of the first Peace Corps volunteers to head overseas in more than two years.

Dennie, 59, will leave the states on Sept. 4 for a two-year stay in Colombia to teach children English. A math and science teacher in Salem Public Schools for 17 years, and a teacher of the deaf in Beverly for 18 years before that, Dennie said the experience has been in the making for decades.

“Across my whole life, I’ve always wanted to do something where I can go somewhere, make a difference and see the world from a different perspective,” Dennie said.

This will be her first stint as a Peace Corps volunteer. It’s also the Peace Corps first time volunteers have returned overseas since COVID-19 forced mass evacuation from their host countries in 2020.

Since then, volunteers have served state-side by helping get Americans vaccinated against COVID-19 and addressing fallout from the pandemic. They will continue this work across the globe.

“Actions taken in the next few years have the potential to fundamentally impact development trajectories (across the world) for decades to come,” Peace Corps CEO Carol Spahn said in a statement. “Peace Corps volunteers returning to Colombia will work alongside community members to support urgent development efforts and build critical connections.”

Dennie’s time abroad will be a far cry from her life in Gloucester, where she has lived for 24 years. She’ll stay with a host family during her initial three-month training, then live with another once she starts to teach. She also will become fluent in Spanish and take part in COVID-19 recovery work.

It will be an adjustment for sure, but one Dennie is excited to make.

“I know that it’s going to be a big challenge. But I also think the meat of the experiences is becoming part of a community and learning from everyday life living with a family,” she said.

Dennie’s road to joining the Peace Corps started about four years ago. While working as an instructional math coach in Salem elementary schools, an ESL teacher in the district asked for help with a new student from the Dominican Republic.

The student was just beginning to learn English and needed help with math. It was a common case for Dennie, besides the fact that she couldn’t speak any Spanish.

The ESL teacher taught Dennie words in Spanish for add, subtract and other phrases used in math. Shortly after, Dennie joined a district after-school professional development opportunity to teach teachers Spanish.

She hired a Spanish tutor that summer and went to the Dominican Republic twice to attend language schools.

“I got the bug in terms of learning Spanish and visiting places where it was the language,” Dennie said.

Most Peace Corps volunteers are recent college graduates, said Erin Curran, a spokesperson for the organization. It’s part of what makes Dennie’s trip so special.

“When Barb told me that she had 35 years of teaching experience, and she was bringing that to Colombia, my initial reaction was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, what a lucky thing,’” Curran said. “There’s advantages to all of our volunteers as they come through different parts of their lives, but I think that’s what’s really unique to Barb’s experience.”

Dennie said “coming into this with experience and a little gray hair” is a good thing.

“Maybe some things would be easier if I was 26, but when I think about the work that I’m going to do — working with teachers who are already teachers, who already are professionals who have experience under their belts — that’s what I do in Salem as a coach of teachers,” Dennie said.

Aside from teaching, Dennie — a Rochester, New York, native — loves to explore Dogtown and other parts of Cape Ann. She has a 25-year-old daughter whom she adopted by herself from the Philippines, and calls herself fiercely independent — sometimes to a fault, she said.

The garden at her home on Wheeler’s Point is full of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and apple and peach trees. While she usually grows “a crazy amount of vegetables,” she’s scaled back this year in light of her trip.

“I live not too far from the water, which is sort of true for anyone who lives in Gloucester, so I’ll definitely miss that,” said Dennie. “But it will be here when I get back.”

Contact Caroline Enos at CEnos@northofboston.com and follow her on Twitter @CarolineEnos.

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