Students Get Wise to World via Pen Pal

Sixth-graders at Jefferson Elementary School will be getting a new pen pal whose letters, videotapes and packages are designed to open new vistas for students still largely unaware of the world outside their country.

The pen pal, Leslie Goodfriend, a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, is one of 6,300 such volunteers being paired with elementary and junior high schools nationwide in a new effort to improve international education.

Peace Corps Director Paul D. Coverdell dropped in on the Jefferson sixth-graders Monday to kick off the program, telling them that the nation “has not done a very good job in learning about our neighbors. . . . You can lead the way as one of the first schools” to participate.

The North Park school was selected for the announcement because of its own efforts in promoting education about the world through a new science curriculum that teachers designed last summer and began using this year. In creating the school’s Windows of the World Program, which focuses on the environment, teachers had contacted the Peace Corps for help last year.

“We said we’d like to help, especially since we have wanted a focus for our efforts,” and had chosen the environment,” said Kathy Hemphill, president of the Peace Corps Assn. of San Diego, a group of former volunteers.

Group members have chaperoned Jefferson students on field trips to museums and wetlands as part of their science studies. Peace Corps veterans, such as Robert Opliger, who works for I Love a Clean San Diego County, have talked to classes about recycling.

So, when Coverdell’s office was looking for a school at which to announce the initiative, dubbed World Wise Schools, Jefferson was a natural choice.

The program also has the enthusiastic support of Elsie Begler, director of a joint UC San Diego-San Diego State University project to improve international education. Begler’s own experience in placing foreign San Diego State students in local classrooms led her to praise the Peace Corps idea.

“A sustained link, repeated exposure of students to the volunteer or a foreign resident, is much more powerful in getting kids to think about other countries on an ongoing basis,” Begler said.

A successful program must apply international education in all subjects and assist teachers, she said.

“You can’t just tell teachers to put more international education into the curriculum, what with all the other things they are required to do,” said Begler, whose program centers on seminars for teachers on subjects ranging from trade to global warming.

Both Begler and Peace Corps officials recite statistics on Americans’ scanty knowledge of the world: Young Americans know the least about geography of any age group surveyed in any country; one in seven American adults cannot locate the United States on a world map; 17% of U.S. public elementary schools offer language instruction.

Sixth-grade teacher Cory Smith said the Peace Corps program will tie in to her students’ yearlong study of rain forests, because their volunteer works in Honduras. Colleague Cynthia Lail said the program can not only make the students “more aware of the world, but also make them aware of what they can do in terms of affecting the environment.”