Wednesday, July 29, 2015

24 hours until departure!

Wednesday, July 29

By this time tomorrow, I will be at Dulles Airport preparing for our 19 hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa.  Back in May, I was so thrilled to be accepted into the Global Education Teacher Exchange Program, and now that we are on the eve of our departure, all of the pieces have fallen into place.

We had a wonderful orientation on Monday where we learned the details of the program and visited the South African embassy.  We even met the Ambassador!



Here's a short explanation of GETEP:
In May, the World Affairs Council received a $250,000 grant from the MasterCard Foundation to support the international cultural exchange of 10 global education teachers – 5 from South Africa (Johannesburg) and 5 from the United States (Washington, DC metro area), during the 2015/16 school year. The program will train educators in skills-based learning, and teaching techniques that will incorporate global education, international affairs and global communications knowledge into their classroom curricula.

The five DC-area teachers are:

  • Julie Caccamise (Wilson High School)
  • Emory Calhoun (Paul Laurence Dunbar High School)
  • Timothy Kelly (Annandale High School)
  • Angie Rollet (Chantilly High School)
  • Sara Romeyn (Bullis School)
The South African teachers are:
  • Dani Cooper (Pretoria High School for Girls)
  • Mushwana Hector (Phomolong Secondary School)
  • Shomane Sekhula (Ponelopele Oracle Secondary School)
  • Lebogang Serwale (Tandi Eleanor Sibeko Secondary School)
  • Thoko Sethole (Seshegong Secondary School)
I will be working specifically with Shomane Sekhula.  I found this video about his school: