After graduating from high school in 1964, I attended Michigan State University and received my B.S. degree in dairy science in 1968. During my junior year, I attended Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand and studied agriculture. My year in New Zealand was not part of any organized exchange program; I made all the arrangements myself. During my year in New Zealand (February to December, 1967), I met my future husband, who was from Vietnam. I returned to MSU to complete my degree, graduating in June of 1968. I returned to New Zealand and was married there in August of 1968. In November of that year, we left New Zealand and traveled home (for my husband) to Vietnam, where we lived for the next seven years.

            Shortly after we arrived in V.N. we learned that the International School in Saigon needed teachers. The requirements were a university degree and fluency in English. The pay was quite good and school was in session only half a day, leaving me time to study Vietnamese, so I applied for a teaching position. I was hired to teach fourth grade, and I loved it! My students were from many different countries – Canada, Korea, U.S.A., Vietnam, Japan, and the Philippines – and I learned so much from them.

            I taught at the International School for two years, but when my first son was born in 1970, I decided to stay home with him. During the next few years, I taught English as a second language in my home. My students were mostly Vietnamese and Koreans. My second son was born in 1972, and I continued teaching English at home. In January of 1975, I had the opportunity to take over a preschool program with a New Zealand friend. Our students were ages three to five and were from Britain, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Canada, and the U.S. I loved teaching the preschoolers, and my own sons were able to be part of the program. Unfortunately, the political situation in Vietnam was not good, and in March of 1975, we had to flee the country. I was able to leave with my two sons and return to my home in Michigan, but my husband had to stay behind because he did not have American citizenship. He was evacuated out of Saigon six weeks later and was able to join us in Michigan.

            During my years in Vietnam, I discovered that I loved teaching. However, because I was not a certified teacher, I could not teach in Michigan schools. We spent the first few years in Michigan getting established. We lived with my mother for a year while we found jobs and my husband and two young sons adjusted to a new culture. We bought a house and had a third son in 1978. I thought about being a teacher, but we couldn’t afford to pay for the classes, and I thought maybe I was too old to go back to school. In 1983, I began to work as an aide for a hearing impaired child in a first grade classroom. I took classes in sign language at the local community college so I could be better able to interpret for him and to understand more about the deaf culture. I was fascinated with the teaching and learning I experienced in the classroom, and decided I really wanted to become a teacher.

            I quit my job as an interpretive aide, took out a student loan, and went back to school full time to get my teaching certification. It took me one year to complete the necessary classes. After completing my certification, I spent a semester subbing in the local schools, and a semester as an aide in three first grade classrooms. In 1988, I was hired as a 6^th grade teacher at Palo Community Schools, where I still teach. Palo Community Schools is a very small school – only 160 students in grades K – 8^th. It’s in a very rural area; there is only one store in Palo (Joe’s Market), and the post office is in the store! Most students come from lower socio-economic groups and don’t see much of the world beyond Palo. My greatest love has been teaching social studies, particularly teaching world cultures. I think it’s so important for my students to learn about the world and the people in it. If we are ever going to meet the Millennium Goals proposed by the United Nations and have peace in our world, we have to educate our students to become global citizens, concerned with the well being of all our world’s inhabitants, not just their own small community. Our students need to understand that they can make a difference in the world and to be empowered to do so. That is why I began teaching about social justice issues in my classroom, such as world poverty and hunger, child labor, and refugees and to help my students become advocates for change.

            In 1997 I learned about a group called LATTICE (Linking All Types of Teachers to International and Cross-Cultural Education), which meets half a day a month in a city about an hour from my school. The group is made up of international students from many different countries who are Masters and PhD students in education at MSU, and teachers from the area who are interested in gaining a more global perspective in their teaching. I joined LATTICE and have been a member ever since. We discuss many things at our monthly meetings – from simple things like how weddings are celebrated in the different countries – to more serious issues such as 9-11 and the Millennium Development Goals. We gain an understanding of the many perspectives people have, depending on their culture, gender, and experiences. We make connections with the international students that continue after they return to their home countries. We have several ongoing LATTICE projects. One is a Zulu basket project. We sell Zulu baskets made by South African women, and we send them the profits to use for scholarships for children in South Africa. My experiences at my LATTICE meetings carry over into my classroom, where I use some of the activities from LATTICE to help my students see things from a different perspective.

It was at one of the LATTICE meetings in 2002 that I heard about an organization called iEARN, which sounded like something I wanted to get involved with. I visited the iEARN site and decided to sign up for an online class, my first such experience. I enrolled in the creative writing class and began my first experience with online collaboration. I was a little apprehensive at first, both about my limited technology skills and about sharing my writing with people I didn’t know all around the world! However, my class facilitators were wonderful, and I soon lost my apprehension and found my online class to be an awesome experience and a beginning to a whole new world of online collaboration with teachers and students from around the world. My students became involved in the Lewin’s project and their interest and motivation in writing grew. They first read what other students had written and then responded to them. Then my students posted some of their original poems on the Lewin’s forum; they couldn’t wait to get responses. Many students spent their free time corresponding with the students who had responded to their poems. Several visited the youth forum and corresponded with youth there. I spent time in the teacher forum and began regular correspondence with a teacher from Egypt and a teacher from Canada, and occasional correspondence with teachers in other countries. It was the teacher in Canada that introduced me to our biggest project that we have been involved in through iEARN, the RESPECT Refugees project. We have been involved with RESPECT for over three years now, and it has developed into a wonderful partnership that I will describe more fully in the next section. Our involvement in collaborative online projects has been both exciting and rewarding for my students and myself. I felt re-energized as a teacher after becoming involved in iEARN. I found that I was able to have my students interacting with students from many different cultures without even leaving the classroom and a lot of learning was taking place beyond just academics. Seeing the excitement of my students about iEARN helped me understand how powerful online collaboration could be for classrooms everywhere.

In May of 2003, I was selected to attend the CIVICS IV Seminar for iEARN in New York City. There I met some of the teachers that had been in my online class, as well as other dedicated teachers from around the world. There were six American teachers and fourteen teachers from other countries including Sri Lanka, India, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Egypt. It was an incredible experience. We shared what we were doing in our classrooms and talked about ways to increase collaboration among schools around the world through iEARN projects. Since then, we continue to share online through a CIVICS forum. We have had a few online chats, also. I have continued to be involved in iEARN projects and am a member of the iEARN cadre, a group of U.S. teachers who act as advisors to iEARN and give feedback on their plans and ideas through online interaction.

In addition to my involvement with iEARN, my classroom is also part of the Peace Corps Worldwise Schools program. We correspond with a Peace Corps volunteer in Guinea at the present time. In the past four years, we have had three different partners. We have been involved in projects with schools located in the countries where our Peace Corps volunteers are serving. We recently were involved in an art exchange with a school in Guinea. My students drew a picture of a typical day here, and the students in the school in Guinea drew a picture of a typical day there and wrote a sentence describing the picture. The pictures were sent through our Peace Corps volunteer. She translated the sentences from English to French and French to English for this exchange. She and I are able to correspond through email to plan activities. She also has a web log, which we can visit at any time to learn of her activities there, and what life is like for her in Guinea

1)         Our first project that we were involved in was through our Peace Corps partner in Zambia in 2001. We corresponded by snail mail and occasional emails. I asked him if he could find a school for us to work with, and he did. We exchanged pen pal letters and my class sent a gross of pencils to the school. Our classroom pencil company, Schoolhouse Pencils, printed the pencils. The students were excited by this exchange, but it was only a short term one because our Peace Corps volunteer finished his term of service and returned to the U.S. The participants were my 6^th grade students (18 students) and a school in a Zambian village of about 200 students. Our major learning goal was to learn more about the lives of Zambian students in the villages. This was really a rather short-term project, but still exciting for my students. As mentioned, there was limited email interaction between the Peace Corps volunteer and myself.

2)         The second project my class has been involved with is the Lewin’s Project through iEARN. This is an online creative writing project, which includes all types of writing from many different countries. We have been involved in this project every year since 2003. My students post their different poems on the Lewin’s site and correspond with students about their writing. My students can’t wait to see who has responded to their poem, and many spend time out of school on the website corresponding with students who are participating in the Lewin’s project and visiting the youth forum. This year there has been a new writing prompt posted frequently, and so in addition to posting their poems on the Lewin’s site, many students respond to the writing prompts.

            The number of students in my 6^th grade class has ranged from 9 to 24 students involved in the Lewin’s project. (This is my entire class.) I do not know the total number of other students involved in the Lewin’s project because there are many schools that participate. Each year the best student poems and prose are selected and a book is published and sent to the schools involved. Each year when we receive the copies of the Lewin’s book, my students eagerly search through the book to see if one of their poems was chosen. There is great excitement when a student finds that his or her poem has been selected for inclusion in the book.  The major learning goal of this project is to encourage creative writing of all types and to help students learn about students in other countries. You can access this project at the iEARN website (www.iearn.org). With the exception of the book of poems that is published in hard copy, all the participation is done online.

3)         The third project, and our most major project, is the RESPECT-Refugees project, which we have been involved in since 2003. I became involved in RESPECT International because of my correspondence with Marc Schaeffer (the teacher who began the RESPECT organization) in the iEARN teacher forum. He explained the project to me, saying that students first learn about refugees, then begin a letter-writing project with refugee students, and then, if interested, become involved in a project with a refugee school. Again, each year I have a different number of students involved, depending on my class size. The school we partnered with in Guinea had 1200 students. I was really attracted to this project because it went beyond just learning about students from another culture to becoming involved in helping students in need and learning about human rights issues and social justice.

            We began this project by learning about refugees through videos, novels, research on the web, informational books, and even a refugee camp simulation. Next we signed up with RESPECT to have pen pals from a refugee school. I had 24 students at the time, so we asked for 24 refugee letters. We were partnered with a school in Guinea called Mohomou Refugee School.  Once I received the letters, I read them all aloud to my student and they chose their own pen pals. They wrote their first letters to their pen pals, asking many questions about how they came to be refugees, what their life was like now, and how we could partner with them. A teacher from the refugee school worked with the RESPECT students. His name was Samuel, and he was able to email me once every month or two, whenever he went to the village. When I asked him how we could best help them out, he said the students needed “footballs” (soccer balls in the U.S.). My class coordinates a school-wide International Dinner each year as a service-learning project, with the proceeds donated to world hunger through Heifer International. My students decided that we would use part of the money raised from our dinner that year (2003) to purchase and send soccer balls to our pen pals in Mohomou Refugee School. We sent them 17 soccer balls that June, and they sent us photos of their team, “jubilating in their victory thanks to the student at Palo Community Schools” (written on the back of the photo). My students were thrilled to be part of this project and were happy to have helped brighten the lives of some of the students there.

My students learned a lot from their pen pals that year. The first letters we received in response to our letters told the stories of our pen pals’ very difficult and tragic experiences. All were refugees from Liberia, and each had a story to tell about how they ended up in the camp, many times without any other family members. Some saw their younger brothers and sisters drowned in the river when trying to cross to safety. Others saw their parents killed by rebels in Liberia or watched the soldiers brutally beat their sisters, brothers and other family members. My students were really moved by these stories. They were really interested in doing anything we could to help them and give them some joy.

During the second year of this project, my students brainstormed ideas of how we could help our new friends. First was a trip to the mall to purchase school supplies with money we raised from some small fundraisers. We sent markers, staplers, pens, pencils (printed by our classroom pencil company), hole punches, tape dispensers, and other necessary items. This was in December of 2003. From there we just kept coming up with more ideas. We learned that they really wanted a computer lab, and through RESPECT, we could help them set up a lab and equip it with 10 computers for a total of $2000. We decided to designate $1000 of our money raised in our next International Dinner (May, 2004) to go towards establishing a computer lab for Mohomou Refugee School. Not only would our pen pals benefit, but also the whole school (1200 students) would benefit. I was able to get matching funds from my church through our mission group, so we were able to send the full $2000 to RESPECT, who worked with the World Computer Exchange to get the computers. The computer lab at Mohomou Refugee School is now a reality, and my class is really proud that they were able to make it happen. (You can see documentation of our partnership on the RESPECT site – www.respectrefugees.com; look at the e-zines for the stories.)

Another project we did with Mohomou Refugee School was to send them a video we made of “A Day in the Life of a Palo Student”. We did a video of our school and activities, and we also included video of common American customs and traditions, such as a birthday party and holiday celebrations. We then sent them a video camera so they could send us “A Day in the Life of a Mohomou Student”, which they did. It was very exciting to see our pen pals in their daily activities. Also on the video was Samuel’s little boy, Emmanuel Judy. Samuel (teacher) had told me in an email that his wife was expecting a baby, and that he was going to name the baby after me in appreciation for all we had done. I was surprised when the baby arrived (January, 2004) and it was a boy. Samuel still named it after me – Emmanuel Judy! I had received photos of Emmanuel, but seeing him on the video was wonderful.

Throughout our partnership we have continued to exchange small items, such as bookmarks, friendship bracelets, valentines, and other little gifts. In return, our pen pals have sent us small handmade purses and beaded necklaces and bracelets. Samuel sent me an African dress with my name embroidered on it and also another Africa top. We have sold the purses and beaded jewelry at the World Market at our International Dinner, so they are helping us to help them.

Last spring we did a book drive to send books to Mohomou. We collected about 300 books in our small school. My class did a presentation on their refugee project at a countywide Service Learning Celebration, and a student from another school who attended the presentation was very interested in getting involved with us. She also did a book drive in her school (a much larger school than ours), and she collected over a thousand books, which we added to ours and sent to Mohoumou.

In November, we started a new partnership with a refugee school in Ghana called Peter Burrus Memorial Academy. Samuel (teacher from Mohomou) was resettled in Australia last spring, and so we decided it was time to begin a new project. So far we have exchanged letters once, sent valentines, and sent books. We are getting to know our new partner school and learning what their needs are. The coordinator of the RESPECT program in Ghana has access to email, so we have been in frequent contact. I know it’s going to be a great partnership.

4)         As mentioned earlier, we have been part of the Worldwise Schools through the Peace Corps for the last four years. We use their resources in our classroom and go to their website often; this has not been as powerful a program as our involvement with iEARN has been, but it has still been a good learning experience for my students. The Peace Corps volunteers change every two years, and just as they are really getting to know the country and are able to set up some projects with schools for us, the term of duty is up, and we have to start over with a new volunteer. However, our present volunteer has been excellent and being able to visit her blog has been great. She communicates frequently with me through email, which I share with my students. This year we did an art exchange with a school near her in Guinea, assisted by our Peace Corp volunteer. Each classroom (one in Guinea and my class in Palo) drew a picture of something typical in their daily lives and wrote a sentence to describe it. Because the class in Guinea speaks French, our Peace Corps volunteer translated the sentences for us. Our Peace Corps volunteer is from Michigan, so she will be visiting our classroom to share in person when she returns from Guinea next year.

5)         During the past four years, my class has been involved in several other iEARN projects, but not to as great an extent as the Lewin’s and refugee project. Three years ago my 6^th grade class participated in the Laws of Life Essay Project. This project invites students to express what they value most in life and the principles by which they live. They respond to other students’ essays and interact electronically on the iEARN site. I have used the lesson plans for Feeding Minds, Fighting Hunger that are given on the iEARN site for that project, but have only had a few students involved in the online discussion. My students visit the Youth Forum at iEARN and communicate with students around the world whenever they have some free time in the room.

            The refugee project is very effective in promoting collaboration because my students really feel like they can make a difference in the lives of the refugee students through their letters and projects, such as sending soccer balls, school supplies, video camera, books, and helping to set up a computer lab for their school. The letters from the refugee students tell stories of their lives and my student are really touched by them. Each time I receive an email from the teacher there, I share it with my students, and so even though they are not able to email their pen pals, they can share in the emails from the teacher. The fact that the students in Mohomou School sent us hand made purses and beaded jewelry made for a great collaboration for our International Dinner. We sold the things they made at the World Market we set up at the dinner, and the money raised went towards setting up a computer lab for them.

When Mohomou received the school supplies we sent them, they sent us a video showing the students receiving the school supplies and using the pens and markers to write their pen pal letters to us. It was pretty exciting for my students to see their pen pals actually writing the letters to them. Included on the video was a segment done during math class. My students were really surprised to see in the video that the students there were studying the same thing in math that we were – factor trees and prime numbers. The teacher was drawing a factor tree on the board and explaining it. The only difference was they had a blackboard, not a white board, and the students were crowded in the classroom – about 80 students in the class, compared to 9 students in my classroom that year. It was such a great way to see how much the same we are, and yet how different our circumstances.

RESPECT has a website and publishes an e-zine that promotes collaboration also. I print out the e-zine to share with my students. They love it when we are featured in the e-zine. We also visit the website and we have participated in the refugee poster contest every year since 2004. I am on the Board of Directors for RESPECT now, which came about from the continual correspondence I had online with Marc Schaeffer, the person who began the RESPECT organization. The board of directors holds their meetings through on line chats.

Participating in iEARN projects such as Lewin’s is a very effective way of promoting collaboration. My students love to have their poems and other writings read and responded to by other students around the world. It gives them a real purpose for writing and encourages them to do their best work. They beg to go to the iEARN site to see if anyone new has responded to their postings. They like to go to the youth forum and write to other students and share ideas. I use the iEARN website frequently to collaborate with other teachers on the forums.

            One of the Language Arts standards that I am required to teach in my school is letter writing. Writing to our pen pals several times a year helps me meet that standard. My students are also required to write a cohesive narrative piece and to write an essay for authentic audiences that includes organizational patterns that support key ideas. The iEARN audience is an authentic audience for this writing, and knowing they are writing to a global audience encourages my students to put forth their best effort. Writing poetry is another standard that I am required to teach at my grade level, incorporating many different types of poetry. Again, we write many different types of poems and choose our favorites to share on the Lewin’s forum. We use Six Traits Writing in our school, and the creative writing that my students do for Lewin’s is evaluated using the Six Traits rubric.

            I am able to meet several of the content standards that I’m required to teach for social studies through our online projects with Lewin’s, our refugee project, and our Peace Corps partnership. These standards are:

            All students will describe, compare, and explain the locations and characteristics of places, cultures, and settlements. (They learn lots about the cultures of students they correspond with through iEARN and through their refugee pen pals.)

All students will describe, compare, and explain the locations and characteristics of economic activities, trade, political activities, migration, information flow, and the interrelationships among them. (We study a lot about refugees before and during our partnership with the refugee school, and we learn a lot about economic activities, political activities, and migration through our study and the letters from our pen pals.)

All students will describe and explain the causes, consequences, and geographic context of major global issues and events. (My students are really attuned to the news when it concerns countries that have students that they correspond with, especially their refugee pen pals. They are very interested in issues of refugees and immigration.)

All students will acquire information from books, maps, newspapers, data sets, and other sources, organize and present the information in maps, graphs, charts and timelines, interpret the meaning and significance of information, and use a variety of electronic technologies to assist in accessing and managing information. (Each year my students have done a presentation on their refugee project at the countywide service learning celebration. They also do presentations to other classrooms, both within our school and in other schools. Technology is incorporated into their research and their presentations.)

All students will state an issue clearly as a question of public policy, trace the origins of the issue, analyze various perspectives people bring to the issue and evaluate possible ways to resolve the issue. (The issue of refugees and immigration is one issue used for this. My students also study the issue of world hunger and poverty and evaluate ways to resolve this issue.)

The Michigan Social Studies Standards can be accessed through the Michigan Council for the Social Studies website (www.michigancouncil.org)

I use the Six Traits Writing rubric for evaluating all writing done by my students. I use a presentation rubric that I developed for the presentations the students do on the Refugee project. Also, my students do reflections in their journals on an on-going basis. They respond to prompts such as – What did you learn about refugees today that surprised you? How did you feel when you read the responses to your postings on iEARN? What ideas do you have that we can do to support our refugee pen pals? Was there anything you thought about in a new way after today’s lesson? (I ask this after we have been participating in a lesson on refugees, hunger and poverty, or visiting the iEARN site.) What similarities do you find between your life and your pen pal’s life? What differences? What does it mean to be a global citizen? Do you think learning about the lives of people around the world is important? Why? What ideas do you have for peace in our world? What things are preventing peace? What can YOU do to make the world a better place? I also write a new quote on the board each week, which students respond to in their journal. I try to choose quotes that encourage them to believe that one person can make a difference in the world, such as this quote by Helen Keller: “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”

My students do lots of projects, which are evaluated by a rubric. One of my favorite projects is making an ABC book. For example, for our Refugee ABC book, students each chose two or three letters of the alphabet and decided what words those letters could represent. They then wrote a paragraph or more about the topic selected for each letter and illustrated the pages. It’s amazing to see what they come up with for the various letters and how these words are connected to their knowledge of refugees. For instance, they had these words for some of the letters: Afghanistan, bombs, civil war, donations (to UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, WFP), education, famine, Guinea, help, internally displaced persons, jobs, knowledge, land, Liberia, Mohomou Refugee School, nutrition, organizations, protection, quick, refugee, RESPECT, Samuel, tots, UNHCR, victims, war, eXample, you, and zone. I am able to assess their learning through the pages they wrote for the book.

I have also done a refugee simulation with my students called “Passages” (available from UNHCR). I do a debriefing afterwards to evaluate what they’ve learned. After doing the simulation, my students are able to understand better about the things their pen pals have gone through and the things they write about in their letters. I really look for evidence of affective learning, which I document through teacher observation, journal writing, and the use of short surveys. We do lots of reflection on our learning.

We do many projects that incorporate technology. My students have done many PowerPoints for presentations in the classroom and to other classrooms. They are evaluated by rubric. We made a PowerPoint to send to Mohomou Refugee School to show them our school and our activities. We printed it out also to send to them. What I like about evaluating technology is that it’s an authentic assessment; if they can do it (use PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Publisher), they know it. I usually end up learning new things from my students when they use technology because they are so quick to try different things and learn how to use them, and then they teach me the skill.

I think the most powerful learning that comes from online collaboration is the affective learning that occurs. I work hard in my classroom to help students learn about and care for people in other countries and other cultures, and to help my students become global citizens. I try to move them from their comfort zones as citizens of a small community and of the United States, to thinking about their roles as citizens of a global community. When they are able to interact with students from other countries and other cultures, their world expands to include people all over the globe. They learn that students around the world share many of the same hopes and dreams, and they begin to think of people around the world as their friends and mutual sojourners on planet Earth. They understand that we share one world and what we do in the U.S. affects the lives of people wherever they live, and what they do affects us. 

Unfortunately, with the war in Iraq still going on, many students come to my classroom with the idea that violence and aggression are the only ways to deal with differences of opinion. They think the best way to fight global terrorism is to bomb everyone. I’ve had students say, “We should just bomb the whole country of Iraq and get rid of them.” When I ask why, they respond with, “They attacked the Twin Towers, so they deserve to die. Those Muslims are all terrorists. They want to destroy America.”  I get very upset by this attitude, but I know that it comes from lack of knowledge about other people and other places, and from not having experiences with people who come from different backgrounds than they do. I feel that my job is to teach my students to view things from multiple perspectives, to teach them to have tolerance and respect for people who are different from them in some way, and to appreciate our differences as well as our similarities. As my students correspond with students who are Muslim in the Youth Forum on iEARN, they begin to see things from a different perspective. We study Islam in our social studies class, and we take a field trip to the Islamic Center to learn about the religion of Islam, but the chance to interact directly with a Muslim student online and become friends, really helps to take away a lot of fear and misunderstanding about Muslims and the religion of Islam. And that, I believe, will help lead to peace in the world.

Through our refugee project, my students have learned that many people in the world live difficult lives filled with much suffering and hardship. They’ve learned caring and respect for people of all cultures and religions, and they’ve learned that they have the power to make a difference in the world. One of the most rewarding experiences in my teaching career was the day we received the second letters from our refugee pen pals. In their letters to their pen pals, my students had asked many questions about life in the refugee camps, how they ended up in the camp, and what their lives were like. The responses to these letters were really powerful and really impacted my students. One of my students, Matt, after reading the letter from his pen pal, came up to my desk and said, “Mrs. Huynh, my pen pal said the day he received my letter was the happiest day of his life.” I said, “Do you understand how important it is to him to know that someone cares? Do you realize that you are making a difference in his life just by writing to him and letting him know that you care?” Matt said he had never realized how important a letter could be to someone, and he was very excited that he had the power to make a difference in someone’s life. I think that is the most important lesson I can teach my students – that they can make a difference in the world. The power of one person is immeasurable. A quote I often share with my students is “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead)

As we study geography and learn the locations of countries and the geography, history, and cultures of those countries, my students are much more interested and engaged in the learning; those places seem real to them now because of their involvement in our iEARN projects. They have friends that live there, so they are motivated to learn more about these places. Current events seem more relevant to my students also, because they have a link to those places. Social studies really comes alive for my students.

One of the best parts of the refugee school partnership with Mohomou Refugee School was the relationship that I developed with Samuel, a teacher and the coordinator for the pen pal project there. He and I emailed each other and shared conversations about many things. He began to think of me as his mother. When he shared with me that his wife was expecting a baby and that he planned on naming it after me, I was thrilled! When the baby was born, it was a little boy. However, true to his word, Samuel named the baby Emmanuel Judy! I felt really honored by this. Samuel sent many photos of little Emmanuel Judy and also sent a video of him after they received the video camera that my class sent. My students were really excited about this, too.

My participation in these online collaborations has really had an impact on my teaching and my professional involvement and emphasis. I have always felt that it was important to internationalize my curriculum and teach my students about the people and places in the world and to help them see themselves as part of the global community. However, once I became involved in iEARN, and particularly in the refugee project, I discovered that my students were much more motivated to learn about the world, and they began to think more globally. I became a more impassioned and inspired teacher, and I wanted to share what I was doing with everyone because I was so excited. Around the same time, I began using service learning as a teaching methodology. I found that linking service to the global community was a perfect opportunity to get my students involved in social justice issues and help them to become global citizens, excited about doing their part to change in the world.

My involvement with the refugee project has led to collaboration with many teachers who have really impacted my teaching. One of them, Samuel, I have already mentioned. He is the teacher at the refugee school, and we have collaborated on many projects. We sent soccer balls, school supplies, video camera, books and other small items to our pen pals, in addition to the letters. In exchange, they sent small coin purses, beaded necklaces, and beaded bracelets to us, along with their letters. We have exchanged videos with them and also exchanged many photos with them. We raised the money to set up a computer lab for their school. Samuel sent me an African dress, a coin purse, and, most importantly, honored me by naming his son after me. The relationship has been a rich and rewarding one.

Another teacher I have collaborated with even more in the refugee project is Marc Schaeffer, the teacher who began the RESPECT-Refugees project (www.respectrefugees.org), and who first wrote to me on the iEARN teacher’s forum. I have worked very closely with Marc for the last three years. I am now a member of the board of directors of RESPECT. I invited Marc to present at a service-learning academy in Michigan, which I was on the planning committee for, and he came. He stayed overnight at our home, so we had a chance to collaborate in person, after collaborating on line for over a year. Then last October, I was invited to present at a conference in Manitoba that Marc was on the planning committee for. I presented at the conference and was able to spend three days there with the opportunity to again spend time with Marc and discuss the RESPECT Refugees program and our continued collaboration. We are in touch frequently through email or instant messenger. The board of RESPECT has their board meetings online, which I have participated in. I write articles for the e-zine. Marc is a person I have come to admire and respect greatly.

I had never thought of myself as a teacher leader until I became involved in online collaboration. However, now I have many teachers coming to me for assistance and ideas. They see that I am very excited about my teaching and the projects I’m involved in, and they want to learn from me. I’ve realized that I have much to share, and that I am a teacher leader. I have begun doing presentations at workshops and conferences to share what I’ve learned, and have been pleased that I have influenced many others to get involved in online collaboration.

I participated in the “ One Book, One World” book discussion through iEARN. Everyone read the book The Purple Hibiscus, and we participated in a discussion of the book on one of the iEARN forums. The discussion is enriched because of the multiple perspectives shared by teachers from many different backgrounds and cultures. I have learned so much from the insights of the other teachers. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince has been selected as the next book for discussion.

My collaborations with Marc, Samuel, and the other teachers through iEARN have given me the impetus to become involved in presenting at workshops and conferences. I feel like I have gained so much from my online collaboration that I want to share with others and show them how they can become involved. My students have gained from being involved in iEARN projects, and they are more engaged because of the things we’re doing. Parents of my students are happy that their children are able to use technology to share with students around the world. They like seeing their children excited about learning. When we receive the Lewin’s book in hard copy each year, containing writings of many of my students, both the students and their parents are really excited and proud to see their work published.

Online collaboration has impacted my teaching and my personal life in many ways. In my classroom I am much more comfortable using technology than I was before I became involved with iEARN. My students are more motivated to write when they are able to share with a worldwide audience online. I have access to many resources since becoming involved in iEARN. When we are studying a certain area of the world, such as South Asia, I can contact one of the teachers from India or Pakistan who is involved in iEARN and ask them for their help in deciding what are the most important ideas to teach about their country. They can give me information about what a normal day is like for them or for one of their students. For example, last spring we were studying the countries of Africa and I wanted to do a more in depth study of Morocco with my students because I had met Jamal, one of the iEARN Moroccan teachers during the Master Teacher Seminar in New York City, and we became good friends. I emailed him and asked for information such as famous people of Morocco, favorite foods, daily life in the countryside and in the cities, current problems among youth in Morocco, and recommended books about Morocco. It was great to share information with my students that came directly from a person in Morocco and not just from a book.

My biggest problem with online collaboration is that I never have enough time to get involved in all the projects I’d like to. I enjoy going to the teachers forum and writing to different teachers. I had a wonderful correspondence with a teacher in Egypt that began with a discussion of Islam and Christianity, their similarities and differences, and then continued to sharing about holidays, places to visit in Egypt, the unequal treatment of women in both our countries, and just sharing about our families. We continued our correspondence for nearly a year. When I first signed up to take on online class with IEARN, I was very nervous about participating with other teachers from around the world through the Internet. My technology skills were pretty limited, and I was afraid I’d make a fool of myself by posting in the wrong forum or not understanding the assignment. However, after about three weeks, I was very comfortable navigating on the website and posting my assignments. I really enjoyed the interaction with the other students in my class and found myself anxious to read what they had posted about my writing. My technology skills improved and my writing skills improved. Now I love interacting on the forums.

Another problem with our involvement in online projects is that my class has limited access to computers. My school is very small and doesn’t have much technology. We have two computers in my classroom. We have a computer lab with twenty laptops, but it is shared with our whole K-8 building. When I first began my involvement with iEARN, I was able to use the computer lab more frequently because not many other teachers were using it. However, as more of the teachers become comfortable with using technology with their students, I have had to share the computer lab more, and so my students have less access than we used to.

I have promoted my projects in several ways. I have presented at local, state and national conferences. I presented at a county service-learning academy in 2003, at the State 4-H Global and Cultural Education Conference in 2005, at the state service learning conference in 2004 and 2006 (in Michigan), and at the Michigan Council for the Social Studies State Conference in 2005 and 2006. I presented at the National Council for the Social Studies Conference with iEARN personnel in 2004 and 2005. I went to Evansville, Indiana to present for iEARN in 2004. I presented at the ASEC (Adult Secondary Education Council) in Winnipeg, Manitoba in October of 2005. I have attended the National Service Learning Conference for the last five years and have shared informally with teachers there. I am a member of the Ionia ISD (Intermediate School District) social studies committee, and I have shared several times at those meetings. I have presented at a LATTICE (Linking All Types of Teachers to International and Cross-Cultural Education) meeting formally, and have shared many times informally. I have written about our refugee project for the RESPECT e-zine (can be found on www.respectrefugees.org website) and have been interviewed for articles for the e-zine several times. I have written an article for the “Finding Solutions to Hunger” newsletter, which is published by Kids Can Make a Difference (www.kidscanmakeadifference.org). (I was then asked to become a member of the Advisory Board for Kids Can Make a Difference, which I accepted.) My projects have been covered in our local newspapers several times. I’m known for my enthusiasm for my projects and I’m always anxious to share whenever I can. I am never reluctant to share about my projects!

I have written lesson plans for my refugee project that are available on the Learning to Give website (www.learningtogive.org). It is a part of a larger lesson called “Them and Us”. I have handouts of resources that I use, including websites, books, magazines, and videos that I share at the presentations I do. I am always willing to share my email and respond to anyone who wants information from me. I always share my email when I present at workshops and conferences, and have had several people email for further help. As mentioned earlier, I am on the iEARN cadre, on the RESPECT board of directors, and on the Kids Can Make a Difference advisory board, where I can be contacted through their website.

I am a member of both MCSS (Michigan Council for the Social Studies) and NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies) and I have presented at both the MCSS and the NCSS conferences. In 2002, I was selected Middle School Social Studies Teacher of the Year by the MCSS. I am a member of ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), member of the Board of Directors for RESPECT International, member of the Advisory Board for Kids Can Make a Difference, member of the State 4-H Global and Cultural Education Committee, member of LATTICE (Linking all Types of Teachers to International and Cross-Cultural Education), member of the iEARN cadre, member of the Ionia county service learning planning committee, member of Ionia County ISD Social Studies Committee, a Teacher Fellow for Service Learning, and national spokesperson for Learning to Give.

I participate in our online discussion group for the iEARN cadre and in the iEARN teacher forum. I have published articles in the e-zine for RESPECT International (www.respectrefugees.org), as mentioned earlier, and for the Kids Can Make a Difference Newsletter (www.kidscanmakeadifference.org). I have made presentations in numerous local, regional, state and national workshops, and one international workshop, as listed in 4 A, where I have impacted many other teachers. One teacher who was at my presentation at a LATTICE meeting became so interested that she signed up for an iEARN online class, became involved in iEARN projects, went to NYC to a Master Teacher Seminar the next year after I did, and now is facilitating an online class for iEARN.

I traveled to Vietnam on a Fulbright–Hays trip in the summer of 2004. There were 16 teachers in the group and we were together for five weeks, so I had lots of chances to share about my projects. In fact, while I was in Vietnam, I got in touch with the iEARN director there. We met two times to talk about iEARN projects, and she was able to meet all the teachers in the Fulbright group in Saigon. (I have lesson plans on the MSU website – www.isp.msu.edu/asianstudies/) In the summer of 2005, I went to Honduras for 10 days on a trip for teachers for Heifer International, a non-profit organization that works to end hunger and poverty in the world. There were 24 teachers in our group, and again I shared with them about my project. 

On the Learning to Give website (www.learningtogive.org) I have a lesson plan about my refugee project and how to get involved. On the RESPECT website (www.respectrefugees.org) you can read articles in the e-zines that are archived there, many of which contain articles about my project. On the Kids Can Make a Difference website (www.kidscanmakeadifference.org), there is an article I wrote for the newsletter; the newsletters are archived there. I have written lesson plans for an Asian studies class I took last spring, which will soon be up on the web at www.indiana.edu/~easc.

   a.      My biggest challenges in conducting OCL projects is finding time to spend on the web to collaborate with other teachers to come up with ideas for new projects and the limited access I have to the use of computers for my students in my classroom. There is also some pressure to use more class time to prepare students for our state standardized tests. I believe I can prepare them for the test and also be involved in online projects. In fact, I think my students’ involvement in the projects motivates them to take charge of their own learning and to learn more than they would in a regular classroom situation, doing preparation for the test. However, not all administrators agree.

b.         I believe the template that is used for iEARN projects makes it easy to develop projects to share. I have been on the GSN website and looked at their projects, but because I am a member of iEARN already, I have not become involved with any GSN projects. However, I think that if you can link your projects to academic service learning, it would attract more teachers. Service learning has been shown to increase academic learning and improve civic engagement of students. I use service learning in my classroom and am convinced of its power to engage students in learning. Service learning has students involved in service projects in their communities, but I stretch our community to include the world community when we do service projects. Our partnership with Mohomou Refugee School and sending them soccer balls, school supplies, a video camera. books, and setting up a computer lab are all examples of service learning projects.

c.         I would be happy to test new resources, tools, or programs for GSN. I am always looking for new resources to use in my classroom and would love to test any that GSN develops that are appropriate to my classroom. At the present time I pilot lesson plans for the Learning to Give organization and give feedback to them. I am very interested in any programs that get my students involved in global collaboration.