11/17/2003 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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11-17-03 Regular Council Minutes Page 2 ROUGdI DRAFT -NOT REVIEWED OR APPROVED BY COUNCdL Dr. Price said [referencing his work in Vandalic] he has found all the way through school, students started talking to students in the other country to find out what it was like to go to school. It is really the communication back and forth. As we become more and more of a global society, his feeling is that it is to our students' benefit to have contact with other students- especially their age. They might do projects together and will talk about things they can share. There may have been 25 kids and adults that would go back and forth year to year but the relationship was always there. Many projects would involve Germany; they would write their pen pal, there was class discussion between Social Studies' teachers here and there. With the Internet, this opens this up far more than it ever was before where a class could talk back and forth as a class. There is no rush on this; if this took a year to think about, that would be fine. He would want to see the Village do a thoughtful job on this if they are interested. The payoff for us will build. Based on his experience, he thinks 10 years down the road we will think this was very good. A brief discussion was held. Mayor Rinker asked if there are individuals within the school itself that they have talked about this with. Dr. Price said besides the Principal and Assistant Principal, they talked to the Foreign Language ;~ - ~ Department and they were very excited-especially if we chose Spain or Germany (not to leave any out.) Cities and Villages who have chosen sites in England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales find it is very easy when they go to visit because they speak English. He would be more than happy to discuss this further. If there was interest, someone would be in charge of sister cities. That is the way it is usually done so there is a contact at school who would work K-12. Dr. Parker said it would be nice to see in what way this project would be incorporated into.the curriculum or how the schools would plan on utilizing it. Mr. Loewer said we have an Advanced European History Class that we could tie into that. The experience from those kids would be beneficial to our students. A lot of students are very interested in international business. The opportunity to immerse themselves into a foreign country, into another language is beneficial as well. The benefits to the Foreign Language classes are obvious but also to international business, to our P European History classes. There is some curriculum benefits that we could tie in with several courses at the High School. Council President Buckholtz said he noticed they have a World Affairs Club. Mr. Loewer said yes. That is another group that would be very interested. They travel all over the country to participate in competitions where they represent foreign countries. That would be an opportunity for them to immerse themselves. . Council President Buckholtz asked how many people are in that group and if it covers all grades. 1