Discovering Burkina Faso
THE BRIDGE: FROM RESEARCH TO PRACTICE Title Discovering Burkina Faso by Maureen Curran-Dorsano, Curriculum Coordinator, Normandale French Immersion School, Edina, Minnesota by Name, 5th Grade Teacher Into and Out of Africa During our two-week visit to ISO, to communicate through a second School, City, State we visited every classroom, from pre-K language. It was a very moving and ango, banana, and baobab trees. to tenth grade. We shared information reaffirming experience. M Geckos, lizards, and low-flying about Minnesota and Normandale, We have all heard and read about bats. The city’s Grand Marché talked about our impressions of ISO the global society awaiting our children. and the savanna’s wide open spaces. and Africa, and enjoyed presentations by Well, the two of us witnessed that And everywhere, the rust-colored dust ISO students. We even taught a couple global society, not in a multinational of the African landscape…. of classes and enjoyed the chance to boardroom, but in a tiny African village This unit, Discovering Burkina teach in English for a change! We were classroom. And while English may be Faso, is the result of a two-week visit very impressed by the ISO students’ becoming the universal language of to this tiny French-speaking country in competency in English. In fact, we business and commerce, it is not—and West Africa. The trip, sponsored in full were awestruck by the multilingual never will be—the universal culture. It by the U.S. Department of State, Office background of those kids. Most speak was very obvious to these two observers of Overseas Schools, was the second a European or African language at that the children who can step outside half of a sister-school exchange with the home with their parents, English with their own language and culture today International School of Ouagadougou their teachers and classmates at ISO, will be the world leaders of tomorrow.
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