Educating for Global Understanding
Continued operational support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) enabled Primary Source to expand its use of educational technology and offer a broad array of programs during the 2007-2008 school year. MCC, a Massachusetts state agency that helps to sustain a wide variety of cultural initiatives and organizations in the Commonwealth, has provided vital funding to Primary Source for nearly a decade.
Primary Source is pleased to announce a new partnership with the China-United States Exchange Foundation, a Hong Kong based non-profit organization dedicated to improving the relationship between China and the United States.
Primary Source's recent study tour, Discovering China as Educator and Traveler, brought a group of twenty K-12 educators to China. In addition to visiting historic and cultural sites, the tour included a week-long service-learning project at the Dandelion School, a middle school for the children of migrant workers in Beijing.
The Wang Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic organization and Primary Source partner, has awarded a three-year grant to support Primary Source's technological growth.
Group Charged with Finding Ways to Better Integrate New Skills in Schools
From the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Board of Elementary and Secondary Education Chairman Paul Reville has named more than 20 educators, business leaders, and innovators to a task force charged with finding ways to better integrate so-called "21st Century Skills" into the public school curriculum.
Laurie Katz teaches theater and dance at Weston Middle School. She recently developed and directed sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in "Street Child," a short play inspired in part by Primary Source's recent course on East Africa.
New Primary Source board member Matt Zalosh is a portfolio manager at Boston Common Asset Management, a socially responsible investment firm. He manages domestic and international accounts and is responsible for investment research on the financial services and healthcare sectors.
As part of Primary Source's Global Art Traditions in the United States course, New England educators discovered a unique educational resource: murals in their own communities. Teachers from across disciplines visited and photographed murals on business, school, and post office walls in neighborhoods near Boston, Natick, Newton, and Providence.
Frances Dodson, a student at New Mission High School in Boston, knew little about civil rights activism in 1960s Boston. "I wasn't sure that there was a civil rights movement in Boston," she said, "I just thought it was in the south."
The Chinese Culture Connection (CCC), a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to promoting intercultural harmony between American and Chinese cultures, honored Primary Source's nineteen years of China education in an awards ceremony on April 4, 2008. In attendance were Primary Source Executive Director Kathleen Ennis, Associate Program Director Peter Gilmartin, and former Associate Program Director Wanli Hu.
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