Project helps keep teachers

abreast of global conditions

By LUTHER CALDWELL

UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL - How can North Carolina social studies teachers keep up with rapidly changing world conditions that have made some textbooks and maps obsolete?

On Saturday, a statewide collaboration between public schools and UNC-CH offered teachers a chance to keep pace with our new global world.

The International Social Studies Project (ISSP) instructed 51 state master teachers in the latest developments in Russia, and in how to share that knowledge with other public school teachers. The Project is based in the UNC-CH School of Education.

Three teachers from the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools were scheduled to participate: Mike Albritton and Dana Dedmond from Culbreth Middle School and Nancy Kindem, a teacher at McDougle Middle School.

The event was part of ongoing training ISSP offers North Carolina teachers through the master teachers. The master teachers conduct workshops for other middle and high school teachers.

"We have master teachers from all over the state," said Michael Hickman, project spokesman, who taught social studies for 16 years at Chapel Hill High School. "We're trying to reach every high school and middle school that we can in North Carolina through our training."

ISSP's goal is to insure that the state's students become well-informed citizens and decision-makers. One of the ways this is accomplished is through training ISSP provides for the master teachers, Hickman said.

"It's wonderful that the School of Education is working more and more with the public schools, because that's what we're all about," Hickman said.

In previous training sessions, the master teachers have studied the Middle East, Latin America, Europe after the Cold War, the former Soviet Union and East Asia.

Materials for the project were developed by the Southern Center for International Studies in Atlanta. A nonprofit, nonpartisan educational institution, the center is an independent center for thought and opinion on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. Its materials are provided free to teachers, thanks to private funding from businesses and a grant from the N.C. General Assembly, and they can be reproduced easily, Hickman said.

The afternoon session explored instructional strategies that enrich teaching. The ISSP and the National Paideia Center, located at UNC-CH but scheduled to move to UNC Greensboro, co-sponsored a reading of Lee Blessing's "A Walk in the Woods," a Broadway political play about American and Russian arms negotiation directed by ISSP staff member Paul Frellick.