An academic partnership with a school in Tanzania is allowing American students to share culture and opportunities for learning with African students.
Hudson Middle School and Orkeeswa School in Tanzania have an academic partnership which began in 2015 when two sixth graders visited Africa with their grandparents. After that visit, teachers Beth Killeen and Carla Sweitzer made a plan for academic collaboration between the schools so that they could teach each other about their different cultures and share what they were learning.
According to Killeen, 100 Hudson students wrote the first half of 23 stories in total about various social issues. The stories were taken to Tanzania by another teacher. 75 Orkeeswa School students completed the stories, and the teacher brought them back.
“We now have 23 International Partnership Stories completed by children in two countries,” according to Killeen. “The Hudson students are now studying the Maasai as their culture on inquiry and planning additional follow up activities with students at the school.”
The writing project impacts 195 students in total, sharing cultural and educational benefits.
“In our classroom, we taught the story structure based on a plot diagram through the partnership story writing which aligns with our state’s Common Core Standards,” Killeen said. “Students learned the structure of a narrative by identifying the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution as well as the theme and character development.”
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