Yesterday, I had an opportunity, along with my son and daughter, to eat lunch with 24 middle schoolers who are visiting from Iksan, South Korea. Again this year, students were selected by the local school system in Iksan to travel to Howard County to improve their English and learn more about American culture.
The students have been taking rigorous classes at Ellicott Mills Middle School, where they spend five days a week in a five-hour English for Speakers of Other Languages, or ESOL, class. They work on reading, writing, listening and pronunciation. Korean is not spoken in the class. This year there has been more of an emphasis on writing.
The experience is not cheap. The trip costs approximately $6,000 for each student. But parents in South Korea believe the program is worth it. In Korea, mastery of English can determine a promotion, the type of college a student attends or the chances of international travel.
The three-week program mixes classroom instruction and field trips. Last week the students went to Washington, D.C. to visit the Smithsonian and the South Korean Embassy. This week the students are scheduled to tour the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and the Goddard Space Flight Center. The students have also taken tours of the Howard County police station and fire department, which are not permitted in South Korea.
We had such a great experience meeting the students yesterday. They were friendly and very interested in talking to us. My daughter said, "It was so cool to meet students just like me, but from so far away." Cassie was so excited to be asked for her email address and plans to keep in contact with a couple of students she met.
Six years ago, the Korean Embassy and the Washington Youth Foundation picked Howard County as the site for the program because of the area's growing Korean population, its top-rated school system and suburban atmosphere. Howard County's reputation in Korea has grown through Web sites that promote the county, articles in Korean newspapers and word-of-mouth endorsements, according to Hyung-chul Choi, education director for the Korean Embassy.
South Korean students aren't the only ones participating in an exchange this summer. Several Howard County educators will leave for South Korea this weekend to help conduct professional development activities with South Korean teachers. This is the program I participated in last summer. It is an awesome opportunity...a life changing experience.
A special shout-out to Mr. Jung for coordinating this exchange program with our very own Ms. Kim.
Source: John-John Williams, 2009
We had such a great experience meeting the students yesterday. They were friendly and very interested in talking to us. My daughter said, "It was so cool to meet students just like me, but from so far away." Cassie was so excited to be asked for her email address and plans to keep in contact with a couple of students she met.
South Korean students aren't the only ones participating in an exchange this summer. Several Howard County educators will leave for South Korea this weekend to help conduct professional development activities with South Korean teachers. This is the program I participated in last summer. It is an awesome opportunity...a life changing experience.
A special shout-out to Mr. Jung for coordinating this exchange program with our very own Ms. Kim.
Source: John-John Williams, 2009
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment