School-2-School, Understanding Through Exchange

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your continuing support of America’s Unofficial Ambassadors and the School-2-School initiative! As we head into spring, we are pleased to announce that our School-2-School program has expanded to four partnerships. From Minnesota and Morocco to Washington DC and Ramallah, elementary, middle, and high school students are learning from and about each other through School-2-School.

Below, please find an update on our ongoing partnerships:

• Elementary school students at Alderman Road in Fayetteville, North Carolina and Sukma Bangsa in Aceh, Indonesia are skypeing with each other on a bi-weekly basis. In early April, instructional coach Ms. Andi Webb will travel to Aceh to volunteer for a week. She will conduct training workshops for teachers on classroom management, phonics and early reading skills, and mentoring. Ms. Webb will bring with her donated manuals, student workbooks, and CDs from her school to support teaching English as a Second Language. She will also seek to learn from her Indonesia counterparts ways in which they empower their students to take responsibility for themselves and completing their assignments.
• Middle school students in at Wheatley Education Campus in Northeast Washington DC and at the Arab Evangelical School in Ramallah are using the “Edmodo” platform to conduct a virtual exchange. They’ve started their exchange by learning about each other’s respective cities, and their next step will be to take up the subject of migration, part of Wheatley’s social studies curriculum. Participating in these migration lessons will help to build the Palestinian students’ English skills while they share their own and their families’ experiences. In late April and early May, STEM teacher Ms. Asante Johnson will lead a 3-person delegation of Wheatley teachers to Ramallah to conduct classes for students in English and Social Studies as well as training workshops for STEM teachers.
• Middle and High School students at the Cardozo Education Campus in Northwest Washington DC and The Carter Academy in rural Bangladesh are engaged in a unique English Language Learning exchange. Students in both schools are studying English as the Cardozo students are part of a special program for new immigrants to the United States. Over the course of the year, students improved their speaking and listening skills as well as their self-confidence by filming videos for each other about their schools and their environment and then exchanging them with their counterparts. Students are now improving their writing proficiency by drafting letters that respond to specific questions and then sending them to a “pen pal.” Lead teacher Chris Obermeyer will travel to Bangladesh this summer to volunteer at TCA as an English language instructor. He will also offer TCA teachers models for conducting environmental sciences projects in their classrooms and community.
• As part of our newest School-2-School partnership, Eric Northard’s students at Grand Rapids High School in Grand Rapids Minnesota are skyping on a bi-weekly basis with Moroccan High School students in the slums of Casablanca at the Sidi Moumen Cultural Center. As part of an after-school program in Casablanca, Moroccan youth are engaging in this series of structured dialogues with their counterparts in Minnesota about youth participation, diversity, youth mobility and migration, planning for the future, and technology. Mr. Northard has integrated these dialogues into his world geography class as well as the after-school clubs that he advises.

Each of these School-2-School partnerships costs between $5,000 to $15,000 to build and implement. Given the number of young people who are impacted in the United States as well as in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Morocco, and the Palestinian Territories that is such an incredible difference to make for a relatively small sum. All of our investments add up -- thank you again for your continuing support of this program!

Best,