Balboa Elementary School teacher Maureen Miller has helped tutor some
of the district’s most gifted students. For the next two weeks,
beginning Friday, she will help teach students from another culture,
and, in the process, hopes to learn something herself.
Miller
will leave for Armenia, where she will stay with an Armenian teacher
and learn about students and teaching methods in the country. The trip
will be the beginning of a year-long working relationship with her
Armenian counterpart, connecting their students through projects and
the Internet. Miller was the lone Californian selected for the program,
sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the State Department Bureau
of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
“This trip is to introduce
American teachers to their Armenian partners and allow them time to get
a sense of Armenian system of education,” said Barbara Miller, chief
operating officer for Project Harmony, the organization coordinating
the exchange.
“One of the criteria was a commitment to
develop and execute the project over the course of a year to make sure
the district and the community support the effort, and to show and
express an interest in multicultural education.”
Miller, who
works part time teaching gifted students at Balboa, applied for the
program after seeing it on a bulletin Principal Linda Milano compiles
for her staff. Miller will return to Glendale on July 30.
Milano said she was so excited for Miller, she did not realize only 21
teachers were going through the program.
“I said, ‘You would be absolutely fabulous for this!’ I was so excited
when I got word that she was accepted,” Milano said.
The two teachers will work together to create either one long- or
several short-term projects for both their classes that will enable
their students to communicate via the Internet. Miller said she
believed she was chosen for the program because of her attraction to
technology, the Armenian culture and her willingness to commit to the
program.
“Because we have such a large Armenian population, I
have an interest in Armenia and that part of the world.” Miller said.
“When we had the huge influx of Armenian children in the ’90s, it was
just something that interested me. I took Armenian for the Non-Armenian
for a year at [Glendale Community College], and I got to know so many
people in Glendale who are Armenian.
“The culture is fascinating to me. Whatever I could do to make our
culture and their culture work together, I’m happy to do.”
Miller’s trip will not be the end of the exchange. She and her assigned
partner, Karine Jaghacpanyan, who teaches technology and English in
Vanadzor, the country’s third-largest city, are already corresponding
via e-mail. In October, Jaghacpanyan will travel from Armenia to
Glendale to visit Miller’s school and class.
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