Janet Parker

Parker’s innovative program, “Uniting Our World: One Friend at a Time”, will establish videoconferencing and written correspondence with classrooms in Spanish and French-speaking regions around the world. The goal is to promote global awareness for the school population, involve parents of immigrants in the school, and support all curricular areas for fifth and sixth-grade students. The project will be a collaborative effort of lessons between language arts, social studies, and foreign language teachers at the Freedom Intermediate School. Students in the program will be matched with pen pals through the use of ePals, a safe, teacher-monitored email connection between students in classes in selected areas of the world. They will begin corresponding with the pen pals by writing about their culture including hometown, recreational activities, foods, shopping, and transportation. The sessions will be videoconferenced in the classroom after the students become acquainted. Parents will also be asked to participate in the sessions with their children. Parker, who lives in Franklin, hopes the program will open the world up to the students and help them not only learn today but build memories of the joy of learning with experiences they will never forget.