|
|
Students in the "Emerging Civil Societies" class learn about the emergence of representative government, like that of the United States, "as a global system rather than something exceptional," says the course's teacher, Caryn W. Stedman.
"We try to internationalize all of our disciplines," says Acting Principal Anne McKernan, who was the Capitol Region Education Council teacher of this year and one of the finalists for the state's teacher of the year award.
Stedman has won this year's Distinguished Teaching Achievement Award from the National Council for Geographic Education, as well as this year's National Council for the Social Studies Award for Global Understanding.
This is Stedman's third year teaching at MLC. Before coming to the school, she was director of the international education resources program at Yale University.
In that position, Stedman worked with teachers at MLC and other schools to help them focus and improve their curriculums in international studies.
Eighth-grade social studies teacher Yvette Santiesteban praises Stedman for how she positively affected the school then.
Before Stedman's contributions to the curriculum, "we just didn't have the glue to seal this thing together and make it into a realistic whole," Santiesteban says.
Stedman now teaches Advanced Placement World History, a 12th-grade class on world religions, and Emerging Civil Societies, which she calls "probably one of the coolest courses in the school."
The school is run by the Capitol Region Education Council and serves students in grades six through 12 from six of the town's in CREC's region: Bloomfield, East Windsor, Enfield, Hartford, Windsor, and Windsor Locks.
It will see its first graduating class next year. About 85 students are in the class.
The school has already had about a dozen of its students study abroad for considerable lengths of time -- a semester, summer, or year.
Senior Desiree Patterson of Windsor Locks is one of those students. For a year, she lived in Germany, where she took all her classes in German.
"I think it is important that we tie everything into the global perspective," Patterson says.
She says she is now applying to college in Germany and hopes to pursue a career in international relations and diplomacy.
Patterson says she also values the emphasis MLC puts on technology. Every student at MLC gets a laptop computer.
Junior Doris Battle of Bloomfield says MLC feels like a community. "I grew up with everybody in this school," Battle says.
The students say going to school with people from other local towns is also important.
Senior Katie Loubier says she didn't want to go to the schools in East Windsor, where she lives, and did not want to continue to attend Catholic school, so MLC was a good alternative.
"You won't just be shut up in Hartford or Windsor Locks," Battle says. "There's a larger community of people to hang out with."
Loubier says at most schools, students are exposed to mostly European and American history and culture. "Here, we get to meet a lot of people from Muslim countries," Loubier says.
The school just won a $25,000 award from the Goldman Sachs Foundation for the quality of its international curriculum. The foundation says MLC is among the nine best programs in foreign language instruction and international education in the country, and it was chosen from more than 400 applicants.
McKernan says that award will be used to start a fund that will enable more MLC students to travel abroad.
In addition to sending its own students abroad, MLC has hosted exchange students and visitors from other countries.
Students from Pakistan and Morocco have already visited the school, and another group from Morocco is expected in the spring. Students from Thailand, Japan, Germany, and Brazil are visiting MLC for the year.
MLC students have also participated in two live teleconferences with a school in Baghdad, one right before the war started in March of 2003 and one about three months later, and got to meet one of the students when she later came to the United States.
All students are exposed to some Arabic, and as sixth-graders they learn some Spanish, French, and Chinese. They must study one or more of these languages for three years to graduate.
MLC offered one AP course last year and is offering six this year. The courses are rigorous; students have lots of summer reading and homework to do.
Stedman says that although her courses are demanding, there is no screening process for students who want to take them.
"If they're willing to do the work, they can take the class," Stedman says.
MLC's students are also required to do community service projects throughout their time in the school, but particularly in 10th grade, when they work on international projects, like raising money to clear minefields, that are connected to the curriculum.
In that grade, all students read a book about child labor practices and how one young person worked against them, "so they can see that kids do make a difference," Stedman explains.
They discuss issues like child labor in an online forum with students around the world.
Loubier used the forum when she was in charge of a group of students in the United States, collecting proverbs from different countries for publication in a book.
"They had to communicate with kids around the world to put this together," Stedman says. She calls Loubier a "global communicator."
