pRE-SERVICE TEACHERS WORk WITH CHIldREN IN INdIA Agreement with social welfare provider will broaden students’ horizons wo senior education majors spent several weeks in Pune, India, during the spring semester as a result of a new five-year agreement between Cal U and Bharatiya Samaj Seva Kendra (BSSK), an orphanage and social welfare provider. Jackie Davis, who is majoring in early childhood education, and Rachel Fletcher, an elementary/special education major, taught language, math and other skills to orphaned preschool and early elementary school-age children. After a brief delay, they departed March 25 for Pune, on India’s west coast. “The kids at BSSK go to public school,” explains Dr. Daniel Engstrom, director of student teaching and associate dean in the College of Education and Human Services. “Their school year ends in March, so Jackie and Rachel were able to work with them all day.” Engstrom says he was impressed with BSSK when he and his wife, Ronda, adopted a child from there in 2008. Soon after that experience, Engstrom began working on a plan to have pre-service teachers from Cal U train at the facility. He traveled to Pune with Davis and Fletcher, and he stayed for about a week to be sure the partnership got off to a strong start. “This is really going to broaden students’ horizons,” he said of the new student-teaching agreement. “They will have no problem getting a job.” The two students spent the first part of this semester studentteaching in area schools — Davis in a third-grade class at Pittsburgh Mifflin PreK-8, in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, and Fletcher in fifth-grade learning support at Charleroi Elementary Center, in the Charleroi Area School District. Both are experienced international travelers. Davis went to Haiti in 2001, and Fletcher visited China in 2008. “Traveling to India is going to place us in a situation very different from the classroom structures we are accustomed to here in America,” Davis said before the trip. “It will challenge us to overcome the barriers that may be presented through differences in languages, age and the special needs of some of our students. “I feel that many of the experiences will help us to gain new insights and diverse ways of overcoming some of Cal U’s Rachel Fletcher works with the same challenges we students at Charleroi Elementary Center. face in our classrooms
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Student teacher Jackie Davis does her student teaching with the third-grade class at Pittsburgh Mifflin PreK-8. FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE here in America. This also Jackie Davis and Rachel will give me an opportunity Fletcher share photos to decide how I feel about and videos from India on teaching internationally.” their blog, www.envision Fletcher, whose trip to educators.blogspot.com China included teaching English at Hebei University, says she wants to teach outside the United States after she graduates from Cal U. “Since I traveled to China in 2008, I have had the passion to teach overseas,” she explains. “After graduation, I hope to spend a year preparing my life and making the necessary plans to teach abroad by fall 2012.” Engstrom predicted the students would find their work in India to be challenging, but also rewarding in ways that go beyond resumé-building. “Some of these (BSSK) students have disabilities. Many of them were kids that people did not want,” he says. “This new partnership is a way to give back to people who have nothing. We can pay it forward.” n By Wendy Mackall, assistant communications director at Cal U
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