Grant Supports Professional Development, Leadership Training for Teachers

Irina Sopina has taught English to high school students in Kazakhstan for the past 25 years. They often ask her about America, wanting to know: What is it like? Until September, she couldn’t really say.

However, a grant from the U.S. State Department brought Sopina and 20 other international teachers to Utah State University for seminars in instruction and curriculum. They were paired with local educators across Cache Valley to observe instructional techniques and to gain exposure to American culture and its educational system. For teachers like Jennifer Nilson, an English instructor at Logan High School, the benefit has gone both ways.

“This has been a tremendous learning experience for me,” Nilson said. “I have probably learned more from Irina than she has from me. I jumped at the chance [of hosting] because I knew it would be a great learning experience.”

Faculty members at Utah State were awarded the $184,000 grant to implement the International Research & Exchange Board’s Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program (TEA). The TEA program is funded by the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and enables experienced secondary school teachers to participate in six weeks of intensive professional development and leadership training in America. The goal is to promote cross-cultural understanding and collaboration between international leaders.

In April, Karin deJonge-Kannan, senior lecturer of linguistics and co-director of the Master of Second Language Teaching program in USU’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, co-authored the grant with Barry Franklin, assistant dean for Global Teacher Education in the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services. Only three other universities were awarded funding. The visiting teachers attending Utah State are from Bangladesh, Egypt, Estonia, Ghana, India, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Thailand and Ukraine.

Participants were selected from a competitive pool of applicants by the American embassies in their home country. All are considered midcareer teachers and have at least five years of experience in the classroom, deJonge-Kannan said.

In summer 2011, she was co-principal investigator of a second grant funded by the State Department that brought 39 international students to learn about natural resource management and improve their English skills. She believes these travel-learning experiences are important for the hosts in the United States as well as the international students and teachers.

“I think it is a two-way learning street,” deJonge-Kannan said.

So does Nilson. Prior to meeting Sopina, she had little knowledge of Kazakhstan and its people, and her students had even less. Their perception of Kazakhstan was limited to the 2006 mockumentary Borat — a film that does not cast the country in a positive light, Nilson said.

“Having met Irina, they see she is intelligent and articulate,” she said. “Kazakhstan is halfway around the world. Most of them knew nothing about it before. Now, they see that we have a lot of similarities.”

But it has important differences too.

“There are computers in every classroom here,” Sopina said. “I envy American teachers sometimes. We teach every subject with textbooks.”

During her college years, the Cold War was in full swing and Kazakhstan, the ninth largest country, was isolated from much of the world. Since it ended, students there learn three languages to stay connected: Kazakh, Russian and English, she said. “English is not just popular, learning it is the policy of our country.”

After spending the past month at Logan High School, Sopina has become a fixture in Nilson’s classroom. The students have asked her to establish a pen pal program upon her return.

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Contact: Karin deJonge-Kannan, (435) 797-8318, Karin.dejongekan@usu.edu

Writer: Kristen Munson, USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences, (435) 797-0267, Kristen.munson@usu.edu