FC Public School Partnership: Continuing Ed.

Local Teachers Travel to Study Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand

AMHERST, MA On July 9, 2001 nine teachers from public schools in Amherst, Northampton, and Springfield embarked on a tour of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand to learn first-hand about the cultures from which many of their students have come in recent years. Their study tour was made possible by a grant of $63,000 from the U.S. Department of Education Fulbright Hays Program in support of a unique collaborative project, Globalizing Knowledge: Bridging Southeast Asia and Asia-America in the K-12 Classroom. The sponsors of the project were: The Five College Public School Partnership, the Center for International Education of the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the Five College Asian/Pacific/American Faculty Seminar.

The itinerary for the teachers included visits to Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City, places associated with a painful period in the history of these countries. But this was much more than just a tour of far-away places with familiar sounding names according to the project director James Hafner, who teaches in the University's Department of Geo-Sciences and has spent many years studying Southeast Asia.

Massachusetts, he points out, ranks seventh in the nation in having the largest number of Southeast Asian immigrants. Despite aid to schools from federal, state, and local sources to assist with this new population, Hafner says, the numbers of school-age children from Southeast Asia "poses special challenges for the schools, the teachers, and all the students" who comprise the culturally diverse classrooms in towns and cities like Amherst, Northampton, and Springfield.

"This project aims to address some very concrete and pressing needs of local classrooms," observed M. Sue Thrasher, coordinator of the Five College Public School Partnership, which was established in 1984 to foster collaborations between school and college teachers. Culturally specific classroom materials are limited, she notes, and there is a shortage of appropriately trained ESL/bilingual educators. "Social studies teachers need help developing new teaching strategies and incorporating curriculum materials that will re-connect Southeast Asian students with their cultures as well as educate other students about the rich cultures and history of their Southeast Asian classmates."

"One of the important outcomes of the study tour is the stronger connections we expect to forge among schools, colleges, and the community," adds Sally Habana-Hafner, of the Center for International Education, who has a long history of working with the local Southeast Asian community. "By engaging our Southeast Asian community members and their children in the project as "living classroom resources," Habana-Hafner notes, "we help everyone feel more at home in this community."

The study tour participants made up of teams of 2-4 teachers from the Amherst, Northampton, and Springfield school districts and faculty and graduate students from the University, had the invaluable opportunity of experiencing daily life in both urban and rural communities in Southeast Asia. They visited historic and cultural sites, including the Temple at Angkor Wat, and met with members of educational, youth, and non-governmental groups. A second phase of work has begun since they returned, translating their experience into teaching materials, drawing on their own journals, photographs, and material objects gathered from various locations.

Among those providing support for this important follow-up aspect of the project are the faculty members of the Five College Asian/Pacific/American Seminar and Dr. Kathleen Woods Masalski of the Five College Center for East Asian Studies.

Curriculum materials that the teachers develop as a result of their participation in the study tour will be made available to other schools statewide and nationwide through published articles, workshops and conferences.