School may be out for the summer, but learning is year-round and definitely not limited to the classroom, if the popular language learning app Duolingo is any indication.
“I’ve definitely started working on my Korean since the day I found out about this trip,” said Elizabeth Clark, a special education/physics teacher at Richmond Hill High School.
Four faculty members from Richmond Hill High School set off to Seoul, South Korea on Sunday as part of a month-long trip sponsored by the Fulbright-Hays Program, an initiative from the State Department that awards grants to teachers, faculty, and students in support of non-Western language and area studies.
With many Korean families and their children relocating to Bryan County and surrounding areas, Clark says that the trip’s focus is to help faculty gain more insights into Korean culture in order to better understand the needs of incoming Korean students in Richmond Hill.
“There’s a huge difference in the education system in Korea than it is here,” Clark said. “Korean students are very quiet and don’t ask for assistance, they try [instead] to listen to the teacher and soak it in and try to learn [the material] as best they can.”
“But as a special education teacher, I’m really good at trying to notice learning differences and I try to help bridge the gap in different ways,” Clark said.
Roman Czerwinski, a Spanish teacher, said that teachers and staff initially heard about the immersion trip from the school principal, Bivins Miller.
“We [all] got an email, an invitation to be a participant of the Fulbright Program,” explained Czerwinski. “I personally have five Korean students in my classroom and so I thought it was a great idea to just be more familiar with the opportunity, so I applied.”
“I also teach ESOL [English to Speakers of Other Languages] and so I thought this was a good opportunity for me to put myself in their place and see what it feels like to be in another country,” Czerwinski said.
The month-long trip will feature a “jam-packed” schedule of cultural and educational learning, said Amber Crews, a school counselor at Richmond Hill High School. The group will do their language courses at Ewha Womans University, a private university in Seoul, and supplement their learning with sightseeing and travel to other major cities like Busan.
Crews explained that she initially didn’t apply for the Fulbright trip, thinking that it was more geared towards teachers. But when the opportunity opened up to all faculty, including counselors, it just made sense to join in, she said.
“For counselors, we actually are the first people that the South Korean students meet,” said Crews.
Crews thinks that it’s important for all faculty to try and meet Korean students and their families halfway.
“The kids, you know, they’re making a big transition, " Crews said. “Why can’t we learn something about them [as well] to show that we’re trying?”