As ‘souvenirs’ of their trip to the Netherlands, teachers returned with ideas for enhancing lessons
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If their students turned the tables and asked what they did this summer, two LCPS teachers could regale them with an account of travel abroad and an all-expense-paid professional development opportunity that opened their eyes to a different culture and another system of classroom instruction.
Elizabeth Hamm, an agriculture teacher and FFA advisor at EB Frink Middle School, and Jillian Campbell, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Woodington Middle School, joined more than 40 other teachers from across North Carolina for a 10-day trip to the Netherlands in June.
The trip was organized by Go Global NC and, in their case, financed by competitive scholarships from the Simple Gifts Fund, which offers travel assistance to teachers in rural eastern North Carolina counties. It paid off in priceless memories, contacts with Dutch educators and new ideas for engaging their students, according to the teachers.
“I’m always interested in any opportunity that allows me to get outside the United States because it helps me broaden my horizons and makes me more empathetic to the world around us,” said Hamm, who is in her 11th year of teaching.. “I can bring a better perspective into my classroom and share that perspective with my students in a first-hand manner.”
As an agriculture teacher, Hamm took particular interest in tour stops at Royal Flora Holland, the center of the country’s renowned flower-production industry, and the Warmonderhof Biodynamic Farming School, a working farm that enrolls students as young as 16 for a multi-year program similar to a college of agriculture, according to Hamm, who earned bachelor and master’s degrees from N.C. State University.
As a social studies teacher on her first trip out of the country, Campbell left home with two objectives. “I wanted to go and see how the school system was there,” she said. “I was curious about how another country’s schools run. I also had the opportunity to go to the Holocaust Museum and the Anne Frank House that pertains to my subject area.”
The group visited the country’s Ministry of Education and several schools in the Amsterdam area. The autonomy that teachers and students exercised there impressed Campbell, a second-year teacher, and inspired her to offer her Woodington students more choice in how they learn. “I’ll give them a choice within what we’re talking about and they can choose what they do for the assignment,” she said.
For the teaching plan that trip participants are required to create and present next month to tour organizers, Hamm will detail a curriculum focused on pollination, pollinators and their habitats. “What I noticed there is that they are extremely pollinator friendly,” she said. “They have native grasses, they have flowers, they have plants to draw in the bugs and insects and they have so many bee and bug hotels. They are being purposeful with that. That’s my plan, to do that here.”
Hamm also expects to link her students digitally with the students of teachers she connected with before she went to the Netherlands. “I hope my students can share with students there and maybe get a better perspective of the world,” she said.
Owing to what she learned about agriculture on the trip, Campbell plans to incorporate lessons about the history of agriculture into her social studies classes. And the California native and Arizona State University graduate is eager to add some stamps to her passport.
“I’m ready to visit the world,” she said.
Elizabeth Hamm of EB Frink Middle School
Jullian Campbell of Woodington Middle School
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