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! In this past quarter, School-2-School reached new heights in bringing together students and teachers from across the globe and providing opportunities for virtual exchange as well as in-person trainings.

Below, please find an update on our four 2014/15 partnerships:

• Ms. Andi Webb of Alderman Road Elementary School in Fayetteville, North Carolina traveled to the Sukma Bangsa in Aceh, Indonesia. She observed Sukma Bangsa teachers in the classroom and then conducted trainings on classroom management and taught English language to elementary, middle, and high school classes. As a highlight of Ms. Webb’s volunteer service, she conducted a training for more than 100 teachers from several area schools on teaching English as a second language, lesson planning, and classroom management. Some of the participating teachers came from more than three hours away for the session.
• Ms. Asante Johnson and Ms. Tanesha Dixon of Wheatley Education Campus in Northeast Washington DC traveled to the Arab Evangelical School in Ramallah to teach English and to train AEES teachers in a number of disciplines. Ms. Johnson and Ms. Dixon conducted five workshops on teaching science to students at various reading levels, curriculum planning, lesson planning, using technology in the classroom, and teaching ESL and language arts. They also hand-carried a couple hundred elementary and middle school level English language books that students at Wheatley donated to the AEES library.
• Middle and High School students at the Cardozo Education Campus in Northwest Washington DC and The Carter Academy in rural Bangladesh continued to exchange “pen pal” letters as part of 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. Students exchange individual letters where they correspond about their interests and apply the reading and writing skills that they are learning in their classrooms. Mr. Chris Obermeyer will travel to The Carter Academy in late July to teach English, conduct TESOL trainings as well as trainings on incorporating community projects into science classes.
• Mr. Eric Northard’s Grand Rapids High School students in Grand Rapids Minnesota completed their series of skype dialogue sessions 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 engaged 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. One of the Moroccan participants, a 17-year old young man, explained that he liked the dialogues because they helped him to improve his English and “we learned from them how to accept other people who have different religions and different ideas.”

Each of these School-2-School partnerships costs between $5,000 to $15,000 to build and implement. The 2014-15 program will come to an end this summer and has impacted hundreds of young people in the United States as well as in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Morocco, and the Palestinian Territories. All of your investments added up to change today and seeds for greater change tomorrow. Thank you again for your support!

Please donate today to support our program for the 2015-16 school year! We will have more information about how the program will expand in our next report.

Best,