June 9, 2009 UNC Global News

Students in many schools in N.C. may never have the opportunity to travel to another country. Carolina Navigators, a program designed to educate the community about global issues, gives K-12 students a look across the globe into worlds they may never see.

The program plugs UNC students who have spent time studying or traveling abroad, into schools in the community, giving them the opportunity to share their experiences and educate others.

Examining Stereotypes

Samantha Levy, a recent UNC graduate, studied abroad in Israel while in high school and has since made four more trips. She has given many presentations around the community about life in the Middle East and the stereotypes that are commonly associated with people who are living there.

“I wanted to get the students to understand where the stereotypes they had, or had heard of, come from,” Levy said. “I tried to debunk some of those and also turn it around to tell them what Middle Easterners think of Americans.”

Levy said most of the students she met with thought Middle Easterners disliked Americans, but they didn’t understand why.

“It was surprising for them to hear that most Iraqis, for example, have never interacted with an American except for a soldier,” Levy said. “I told them maybe that’s why they have ill feelings towards Americans in some cases. It’s just a side of it these students have never been exposed to because of their background and through no fault of their own.”

Levy said the students’ favorite part of her presentation was the traditional Israeli dishes and the discussion about the differences between the cultures.

“The kids were dumbfounded that you can’t technically order a hamburger or cheeseburger at McDonalds because everything is kosher,” Levy said.

Lack of Resources

Opening the students to new information is the way teachers say Carolina Navigators is having the most significant impact in their schools. Budget cuts have been widespread across N.C., with many foreign language programs the first to go, meaning international education is on the decline in some schools at a time when it needs to be a priority.

“A large percentage of our students don’t really travel that much,” said Valerie Jones, a music teacher at J.S. Waters School in Goldston, N.C. “They would just not have the breadth and depth of experience without the program.”

Jones said her school doesn’t have the resources to teach students about global issues in depth, even though they are becoming increasingly important.

“The world that they are living in is becoming more and more diverse,” Jones said. “So being able to have a positive experience with a diverse group of people is something that we hope to provide for them. They are learning that other cultures have wonderful things to offer that they might be interested in and just didn’t know about.”

Students at Carrboro High School in Carrboro, N.C. have had the opportunity of taking a Global Cultures class, where several students from Carolina Navigators visited to talk about their time abroad.

“One presenter talked about how there were no real bathrooms where she was, and so every morning she had to go to this common sink place,” said Illana Schmidt, a sophomore at Carrboro High School. “That was surprising to me because I know it still exists, but it’s not every day you hear from someone who has been there to see it.”

Schmidt has traveled throughout Europe and Asia already, but she said when she gets to college, she wants to go abroad at the first opportunity.

“It definitely confirmed my thoughts of wanting to travel abroad,” Schmidt said. “The Navigators talked about how kids in other countries need education and I really wanted to find out how I could get more involved in that.”

The Course

Illana Schmidt is one of the almost 10,000 students reached by Carolina Navigators across the state in the 2007-2008 academic year. Navigator participants visited over 60 schools that year, and the number is increasing.

Participants can also opt to enroll in a semester-long course, taught by the program’s coordinator, Tara Muller. The course focuses on cross-cultural interactions an highlights the best practices in international education in K-12 classrooms across the state.

“We want to teach people about global teamwork and how people can better interact with those who are culturally different than themselves,” Muller said. “We want to make them more culturally aware and bring the world to North Carolina students to help them become better global citizens.”

Muller said the students are very dedicated and often go above and beyond the requirements, which include 30 hours of service work.

For those interested in teaching, Carolina Navigator Samantha Levy said, the course provided a variety of opportunities for experience in the classroom and strategies for interacting with students from different backgrounds.

“We met with organizers and teachers who were all from different international organizations and they shared the best practices with us,” Levy said. “It was perfect for people who wanted to teach in another country or teach about another country while in North Carolina.

“You have to interact with so many people in life; knowing how to be culturally sensitive is very important.”

The ‘International Culture Experience’

In the spring of 2007, one of the program’s participants, Zach Torres-Fowler imagined a different approach – getting the students to come to Chapel Hill. He organized the “International Culture Experience,” inviting any UNC students who had studied abroad to set up a “country” and relive their experiences for visiting school groups.

“We had everyone from graduate students to undergrads who had studied abroad,” Torres-Fowler said. “There were something like 45 countries from around the world represented. Students from around the state came to Chapel Hill for that one weekend so they could ‘travel’ country to country.”

Students received a passport stamp from each “country” they visited, encouraging them to go to more countries and learn about each place. Also, students played a trivia game that required them to go to different countries for the answers.

“A lot of students will have the chance to study abroad,” Torres-Fowler said. “I think a program like this really broadens their horizons and shows them that there is a world outside the United States, outside North Carolina and outside their communities.

“I think a lot of people can go online and find the information, but to hear it from someone who was there and has seen it for themselves completely puts the things they learn about in their classes into perspective.”

Beyond the Presentations

Those UNC students participating in the program are encouraged to develop lesson plans related to their classroom presentations, which will be made available on the Carolina Navigators Web site, starting this fall. Muller said this will give teachers the chance to prepare for the presentation they will receive and also will give them materials to discuss afterward.

Carolina Navigators has also inspired others, like Mary MacKay, to bring the world to the community. MacKay has created an activity called “Brainiacs,” in which her third graders at Lincoln Heights Elementary School in Fuquay-Varina, N.C make paper dolls of themselves with their real photographic heads. When MacKay, her daughter in Scotland, or parents of students travel, they bring the "Brainiacs" and pose them in front of recognizeable landmarks around the world.

This gives MacKay the chance to teach her students about all the different places they are “visiting.”

“So far this year, my students have traveled to Scotland, England, Pittsburgh and San Antonio at absolutely no cost,” MacKay said. “Tara Muller has been most accommodating in assisting my efforts to bring authentic multi-cultural experiences into my classroom over the years.”

MacKay said it is important for students to learn about places outside of their communities, even at an early age.

“It has proven to be very rewarding for my students in so many ways,” MacKay said. “I believe it is vital for all members of an active, educated, democratic citizenry to deepen their levels of knowledge and their understanding of our increasingly complex world.”

For more information, contact Tara Muller at tara_muller@unc.edu

- First photo by Mary MacKay

- Story by Andrew Cummings ‘10