By Alex Dobuzinskis
Staff Writer
GLENDALE — Armenian teacher Karine Jaghatspanyan took on the role of student Monday at Balboa Elementary, learning how American children are taught, in order to enrich her own approach.
Jaghatspanyan — one of 22 teachers from Armenia visiting the United States as part of a State Department-sponsored exchange program — is the only teacher from the program sent to Glendale.
“I’m impressed,” Jaghatspanyan, 42, said while visiting a third-grade class at Balboa Elementary. “Both about teaching methods and their knowledge, too. (The students) know so much.”
The federally funded program, known as the Project Harmony Teacher Exchange, not only offers teachers the opportunity for professional development but students the opportunity to learn about different cultures.
As part of the program, students in Jaghatspanyan’s computer lab class in Vanadzor, Armenia, have been exchanging messages with Balboa Elementary students about their daily lives, as well as folktales and heritage.
“My whole family is from Vanadzor, just exactly where they are from,” said Mona Chilingaryan, 10, a Balboa Elementary student. “So it’s pretty cool to know exactly what they do.”
Students and others also have learned of some of the challenges the Vanadzor students can face. Earlier this year Vanadzor students could not send online messages because the school had little heat and it was too cold to operate the computers, said Jeff Lawson, 51, a parent volunteer helping in the Balboa Elementary class.
Jaghatspanyan noted that the school was damaged in an earthquake in 1988, but said things are improving.
“After then we rebuilt it. We had no equipment, and day by day everything is getting better,” said Jaghatspanyan.
Balboa Elementary teacher Maureen Miller went to Armenia last July as part of the exchange program and noted the differences in resources.
“Sometimes we have more than we need. They certainly have less than they need. But they work very hard to educate the students with very little,” Miller said.
Among the differences are that elementary-school classes in the Glendale Unified School District are broken into smaller groups in which students can talk to or get help from an aide — students in classes in Armenia sit in rows facing the teacher.
But Jaghatspanyan said an advantage to that system, which also has been used in the United States, is that students maintain focus on the teacher.
“Every method has its advantages and disadvantages. None of them is better and none of them is worse,” she said.
Jaghatspanyan will visit other schools in Glendale this week before heading to Washington and Philadelphia to complete the exchange program.
Yorumlar kapatıldı.