Stanislaus State, high school students get to see through other eyes

University students and high-schoolers took a novel kind of final exam, displaying joint projects on the immigration experience and comparing how schools work in different countries.

This fall, future teachers in the global-studies course at the California State University, Stanislaus, College of Education worked with recent immigrants in Davis High School’s Language Institute. The teams presented their work for comments and grading at the Davis High English Learner Advisory Committee meeting last week.

“They were learning from each other,” said Karen Breshears of the Stanislaus State faculty. The experience made her future teachers more culturally sensitive, she said. “They were learning how to educate and communicate with the parents of their students,” she said.

The university and high school collaboration, in its first year, exceeded her expectations, Breshears said. “It was real-world experience. What they get from us is theory-based,” she said. “This all sounds great, but how do you use it? How do you apply in the classroom?”

Second-semester student teacher Dustin Carr echoed that sentiment. “This was one of the best classes in the program,” he said. “We get a lot of textbook classes. This had great application.”

Carr worked with Davis High student Kevin Jia, who came from China. Jia has been taking Spanish while working on his English fluency. “I want to be successful,” Jia said, adding that knowing Spanish as well as English will help him with jobs once he graduates.

Favorite foods, family traditions and simple phrases were part of the training, as was broader research on each immigrant’s homeland.

The teams each included one teacher in training, one student from Mexico and one student from a different country. The three-language team used English when possible, but relied heavily on Google’s online translation application. All Davis students have Chromebooks this year.

At the committee meeting Thursday, the student teams stood by their poster presentations on each Davis student’s country, ready to speak with community members about their collaboration. The university and Davis students were graded on the project and how well they answered questions, instructors said.

The mix helped students get to know something about countries other than their own, said Onel Esho, a Davis High student from Iraq. Esho worked with Antonio Becerra, from Mexico, and Stanislaus State student Jeni Cunha. “I’d love to see Mexico. I love to travel,” Esho said.

Stanislaus State education Dean Oddmund Myhre said he was pleased with the joint project. “This is what we want. We want our students embedded in schools. It’s really good for our students to work like this, in small groups,” he said.

This story was originally published December 15, 2014 at 12:37 PM with the headline "Stanislaus State, high school students get to see through other eyes."