By Rebecca Hartman | Program Coordinator
Creative Learning is pleased to announce the start-up of two of our 2015/16 School-2-School partnerships in this last quarter of the year. Both of these partnerships build off of successful programs last year, between Cardozo middle school in Washington DC and The Carter Academy in rural Bangladesh and Grand Rapids High School in Grand Rapids, Minnesota and The Sidi Moumen Cultural Center in Casablanca, Morocco. We are excited to see how our wonderful educators and their inspiring students build on their success together in this upcoming year!
With our Washington DC – Bangladesh partnership, both schools are working on improving their students’ English reading, writing and speaking abilities. Students in each school are creating a series of videos about their life stories and teachers are also introducing e-mail as a tool for communication. Chris Obermeyer, of the International Academy at the Cardozo middle school explained that almost all of his students had never used email before and did not have their own accounts. Last year, as part of their pen-pal program, students would actually hand-write letters, their teachers would scan them, and then print them out. Creating email accounts and then sending messages back and forth builds off of the letter writing last year and improves both sets of students’ English writing skills and vocabulary. The exercise also offers an opportunity for students to gain confidence with communicating in English in both an informal and formal written form.
Chris says the current e-mail exchange, which includes students sending their own short video clips of the students demonstrating a “day in their life” “has been a great way to introduce the students to one another and is a great activity that allows the students to build on their professional skills for their future like writing applications and learning to write in a more professional manner.” He continued, “This activity has been extremely beneficial in teaching his students important information that should be included in all e-mails like how to personalize and email and how to include the correct subject formatting that will help them with applying to colleges and jobs in the future.”
With our Minnesota – Morocco partnership, Eric Northard, a World History teacher at Grand Rapids High school in Grand Rapids, Minnesota and Mohammed Elkhattaby, an educational assistant at the Sidi Moumen Cultural Center in Morocco, are leading a series of theme-based dialogues on youth engagement in schools and in their community. Eric says, “The discussion of the different types of international clubs and student councils that his school offers which focuses on developing leadership skills, sparked interest in the students in Morocco, hoping that they could maybe develop a student council within their own center that would allow them to share their voices with their community.”
We expect 2016 to be a big year for the School-2-School program, as we continue to support these two partnerships’ growth and are poised to announce new partnerships in the first quarter of next year. Thank you for all of your support!
By Rebecca Hartman | School-2-School Coordinator
By Ben Orbach | Director, School-2-School
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