Page 10 - Priorities #35 2006-October

Global Education:
Two Extraordinary Teachers Take Opposite Approaches to Getting Students Creatively Involved.
Science teacher Christine Muir and Spanish teacher José Meija-Torres demonstrate opposite approaches to teaching globally. Ms. Muir virtually took students from numerous classrooms along with her on a 24-day marine research project. She posted scientific journal logs with pictures and answered email questions daily from teachers and students.
José Arnoldo Mejia-Torres proves that you don’t have to be Hispanic to celebrate this wonderful culture by creating all-inclusive festivals on the campus. What began three years ago as a marvelous performance showing the diversity of cultures in Mexico, Central and South America offered by the Spanish classes for the entire community has now grown to include Day of the Dead celebrations.
For these events, the school community is not the audience—they are participants.
“Celebration” might seem a strange word to apply to a day for remembering the departed. But the observances draw on pre-Hispanic beliefs and practices as well as Spanish Catholic ritual, and
they do not focus on sadness. It is a time of family reunion for the living and, for a few brief hours,
also for departed loved ones who are believed to return to share in this time, said Mr. Mejia-Torres. Participants should expect music, dancing, holiday foods, laughing and fun as well as occasional solemn moments around the altars, he said.
Mr. Mejia-Torres visits family in Honduras every summer, and every fall he returns with
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more costumes and flags and hats and symbols of native and Hispanic culture for his classes. This year, he has brought with him enough towel-
sized textile pieces to form a cross that covers the newly-retiled Benedictine Square (formerly Red Square). Each textile features a design with symbolic meaning. Spanish students will create the cross. Then, to begin Day of the Dead festivities, the school community will walk in procession around the cross before going to the altars they have created with flowers, candles, photos, colorful fabrics, special foods, and other memorabilia honoring loved ones.
Christine Muir’s adventure began when
she applied to participate as a Teacher at Sea for ECOHAB-PNW— a 5-year, multidisciplinary oceanographic research project. The requirements for Teacher at Sea are rigorous, and she is one
of only two teachers accepted for this portion of
the project. University researchers and graduate students onboard the vessel are seeking to determine the environmental factors responsible for initiating and sustaining blooms of toxic phytoplankton
off the Pacific Northwest coast. Christine will be conducting research in the lab as well as posting real-time daily journals discussing cutting-edge research.