New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman once said, “We were divided by walls during the Cold War, but now we are united by the web.” Because of the advancement of technology, we have become more connected than ever, and we are now interconnected like a global village; consequently, international collaboration has become integral not just to higher education but also to high school education in the twenty-first century, and recently international partnerships among other countries have been growing incrementally. For countries to survive globally in their economy, they need to prepare and equip their students with international experience and with perspectives and skills. Under the pressure of technological progress and modernization, the Philippines has initiated K-12 educational development programs and committed to fully supporting and modernizing its K-12 education system. The problem is that the government has given some guidelines for schools to implement these K-12 programs, but does not have any pilot programs to replicate them nationwide. Therefore, Minority Care International (MCI) has partnered with Thompson Christian School (TCS) and invited a guest speaker Dr. Sweeney, the superintendent of Boles Independent School District, to address the topic of educational development and to train some of the schoolteachers for the K-12 program. The workshops about K-12 program helped TCS to usher in the newly nationally mandated 11-12 grades and to develop a seamless K-12 curriculum program. Besides training the TCS teachers, MCI in partnership with Boles Independent School District and TCS, has initiated a unique international experience involving a semester of its Cross-Cultural Teacher/Faculty Exchange Program. Continue reading
