Foreign exchange: school leaders find tangible benefits in their overseas educational study missions.

During a visit to China in 2000, Virginia Collier, a clinical associate professor at Texas A&M University, popped in on a primary school music class. She played the "Barney" song on the organ, but the children did not react.

The classroom teacher leaned over and whispered some advice in Collier's ear. The former superintendent responded by performing "Happy Birthday" to a room full of smiling Chinese children.

Collier's lesson in universal educational experiences versus culture-specific ones, such as singing purple dinosaurs, illustrates the eye-opening experience of a few dozen U.S. school leaders who each year travel abroad on organized educational study missions. They are doing so in an effort to build bridges, share the perspective of the United States' educational system, learn about global education and bring back ideas that might benefit their own schools' academic and co-curricular programs.

For the most part, the traveling educational leaders are participants in one of two long-running programs: the Fulbright Teacher and Administrator Exchange managed by the U.S. Department of State and the annual International Seminar for Schooling, co-sponsored by AASA and the University of Texas.

"Unless we understand the people, cultures and histories of the world, we will not understand the students in our own schools. That's one reason why exchange programs are very important," says Gary Marx, president of the Center for Public Outreach in Vienna, Va., and formerly AASA's director of communications.

Because the United States has friendly neighbors bordering it, Marx adds, "some people don't feel a need to get connected with other parts of the world, but the fact is we do. Myopia simply doesn't work anymore."

Sundry Benefits

School administrators who take educational journeys overseas often return inspired to create new programs, spark a re-examination of long-held practices, or share some of the vast resources of the United States with developing nations. Consider the following:

* Joe McGeehan, superintendent of Highline School District 401 in Burien, Wash., studied partnerships between Germany's private sector and schools on a Fulbright trip in 2000. Influenced by those partnerships, McGeehan subsequently acquired funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create a four-year aviation and aerospace high school, built on collaboration with Boeing and other private-sector organizations.

* Joseph Cirasuolo, who headed the Wallingford, Conn., school system for 12 years before retiring a year ago, inspired a group of his district's high school students upon returning from a trip to South Africa to collect school supplies for needy children in Kenya, another place he has visited. After one trip, Cirasuolo approached superintendent colleagues nationwide about sending surplus school supplies to developing nations.

* Frank Barham, a former superintendent who now directs the Virginia School Boards Association, has lobbied Virginia's General Assembly to create a "career and technological education" program that could remove for some students the stigma of failing to attend college right away. His actions were influenced by ISS foreign study trips to China, Singapore and Eastern Europe.

* James Egan, superintendent of the Southwestern Wisconsin School District in Hazel Green, Wis., returned from his Fulbright trips to Argentina and Japan with a greater awareness that second-language study must assume a greater role in the curriculum at earlier grades.

"We have to make it more a part of our curriculum," Egan says, adding he'd like to see it begin in 1st or 2nd grade. "About half of our population in larger cities is Latino. We need to have our students be able to communicate. A big initiative for me is to really push the extra time for languages here."

Comparative Thinking

While not every administrator's foreign travels to schools and cultural sites results in policy change or a new initiative back home, the experiences do influence most participants' thinking about their own brand of leadership and the distinguishing qualities of America's public schools.

"I firmly believe we have the most unique education system within the entire world and we should be proud of that," says Miles Turner, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, based on his study missions in France, England and Italy over the past decade. "Too many people want to take the American education system and turn it into some mythical system they believe exists in some foreign country."

Paul Houston traveled widely as a superintendent even before becoming

AASA's executive director in the mid-1990s. He has participated in educational trips to 20 countries on six continents.

"It broadens your world view and opens your eyes to the fact that [foreign education] is much more complex than we seem to view it from our somewhat limited perspective," he says of the benefits.

Houston's travels also provide him with an ongoing supply of colorful metaphors for the educational issues about which he writes for this magazine and others. Watching lions roam the northern end of the Serengeti in Kenya fueled one such point.

"It connected for me to the way we limit children in our classrooms and the need for freedom as an underlying requirement for learning," Houston says.

On a trip in fall 2002 to Vietnam, where he was faced with having to cross a chaotic and threatening street, Houston says he realized "the only way I could get to the other side of the street was by stepping into it.

I think for leaders, particularly in today's climate where things are extremely chaotic and often look very dangerous, there's a tendency to want to stand on the curb and watch. You're never going to get to the other side of the street until you step into it."

Cultural Contrasts

When U.S. school administrators step off an airplane into a foreign land, it becomes the ultimate social studies lesson. On one of her trips, Collier meta university-educated Chinese teacher who aspired to teach elementary school. However, in China, a university-educated teacher may teach only at the secondary level. When the woman refused the high school job assigned by the state, she lost her benefits.

Commented Collier, who at the time of her trip was transitioning from a superintendency to a position teaching school law, program evaluation and facilities administration at Texas A&M: "If you do what the government tells you to do, then you have the benefits of living in a Communist society. If you don't, it's as if you don't exist."

One common observation of those who've traveled abroad: U.S. schools are more technologically advanced than anyplace else, including Europe. In Italy, some of the facilities now used as schools were built as palaces, estates and government buildings.

"As we're sitting in a beautiful school in Rome, admiring the two-century-old frescos on the ceiling, our guides tell us because it is an historic building, they cannot drill through the walls to wire them for computers," says Turner, head of the Wisconsin superintendents group.

In China, few classrooms had computers. The overhead projector was the highest form of technology.

Also noticeably missing in many foreign schools, according to U.S. educators, are programs and services considered basic to the operation of American schools.

During his visit to Romania last spring, Danny Young, superintendent in White Hall, Ark., says he learned the host country's schools have no lunch program and students who want to participate in athletics, chorus or instrumental music must enroll in special schools found primarily in larger cities.

Parallel Roles

American school leaders have discovered the job demands and public expectations of their foreign counterparts match their own country's in many respects.

"When you start stripping away the language barriers, we find administrative jobs around the world are extremely complex," Houston says. "The demands have gotten tougher on them, so the expectations are higher. In some cases, I felt good about our people because we still have more latitude than a lot of administrators in much of the world, where it's very much top-down. But ironically, we're moving away from that to become more top-down also. The latitude for making decisions and being creative is starting to be diminished."

Adds Turner: "When you talk with them, it's as if you're talking with an American administrator. They are struggling with unions, finances, parents, high expectations and student discipline."

Marx, of the Center for Public Outreach, points out that one of the universal concerns among school administrators is the lack of time to handle mounting responsibilities.

"I will never forget in Beijing where some of our national Superintendents of the Year were sitting down with superintendents from the greater Beijing area and one of the first questions that one of the Beijing area superintendents asked was, 'How do you find time in the day to do all of the work that needs to be done ?' That could have easily been a question from someone in any part of North America," Marx says.

School leaders who feel as if they spend their lives on their jobs might consider Egan's counterpart in Argentina, who literally sleeps at the school that he oversees.

While given the title of building principal, Felix Correa, the Argentine administrator, functions as both a principal and teacher in a remote country school, where he lives in a room throughout the school week, returning home on weekends.

The Argentine principal does not have a significant role in budgeting, curriculum or teacher hiring as all are dictated by the state, Egan says.

"They were having a bingo party to raise money to buy paper," Egan, a Wisconsin superintendent, says. "It blew my mind. We go through more paper daily than they probably go through in a year."

Reciprocal Visits

Educators from other countries can visit the United States as part of most Fulbright exchange programs.

According to Roberta Croll, outreach specialist for the Fulbright Teacher and Administrator Exchange, some 200 international educators travel to the United States every year, though less than two dozen typically are school administrators.

What the foreign educators find most remarkable are the available resources.

During a visit to Whitehall, Ark., Florin Serbu, a school leader from Romania, told his host, Superintendent Danny Young, that he was highly impressed by the guidance local schools receive from their state education agencies for program development, something he does not get back home.

Correa, of Argentina, visited Egan's school district in November 2002. Egan traveled there the following summer.

"I think it was somewhat of a culture shock," Egan says of his counterpart's visit to rural southwestern Wisconsin. "The area he comes from is relatively poor. He was really in awe of the many material things we have."

Correa's visit fit nicely in with the rural Wisconsin district's goal to move toward more global awareness among its students. "We've led a pretty sheltered life in our area and we really are in a global economy," says Egan, adding he did not realize until he visited Argentina that some farmers in Wisconsin ship cattle there.

"Felix brought a whole other culture with him," Egan says. "He gave presentations to different classrooms. He was like a local celebrity in our town." During his departure ceremony, some students cried to see him go.

"To make that connection with somebody from another land has encouraged me to pursue additional visits through Fulbright," says Egan.

Hosting foreign school leaders can help to break down stereotypes.

John Morton, superintendent in Newton, Kan., hosted female educators from Oman in 2002 and earlier handled arrangements for two groups of British educators. Morton himself gained some cultural understanding.

The women from Oman never had spent a night away from their husbands, so the superintendent did some on-the-spot juggling to place the visitors together in the home of a female administrator in Newton to accommodate their wishes. "They were a little nervous, being so far from home," Morton says. "As the week went on, they became more comfortable."

The students in Newton were fascinated with the Oman educators, who were proficient in English. "It broke down a lot of stereotypes," Morton says. "People are people, schools are schools and kids are kids. Some of the same issues they face in their schools are the kind we face as well."

Unvarnished Insights

Administrators who have traveled abroad on the ISS and Fulbright trips say they appreciate the tours are not "sugarcoated."

On a trip to France, Miles Turner says his tour guide raised questions about the quality of his own country's schools and mentioned that dissatisfied parents often pull their children out of public school and place them in a private one. "He did not feel (France's) public schools were of a significant high quality," Turner says. "I don't think he was patronizing us, but he was pointing out that they had a lot of problems with the number of hours teachers and administrators worked and the amount of pay they received. It is not a highly respected or paid profession.

"I thought the parallel was interesting with American schools where school districts that are underfunded frequently face a challenge for the more wealthy students who exercise choice and go to private school."

Egan heard frank talk on his Fulbright trip to Japan about the disturbingly high rates of suicide among students and bullying.

"That was part of the reason they were going to go from a six-day (a week) educational program to five days and they were going to eliminate some of these testing standards because they felt the pressure they were putting on the kids was causing a lot of the bullying, social problems and discipline problems in the schools," says Egan.

Stronger Appreciation

School administrators often return from foreign study trips with an appreciation for the democratic decision making of public education in this country.

The educational systems of the United States, Canada and England are unique, says Barham of the Virginia School Boards Association, in that policies are decided by lay elected board members compared to top-down, national government dictates in other countries.

Based on her trip to China, Collier, a former district superintendent in Texas, notes: "I felt like everything was coordinated at the central level, but it seemed to be very driven by who you knew. I didn't have the feeling that your own individual hard work and initiative was going to pay off in quite the same way."

AASA's Houston points out that Americans "only hear criticism of how bad we are and how we score lower in the world on tests without understanding the contextual differences." Singapore may excel in math and science, but does not have the ethnic diversity of the United States, he says, adding Finnish students score higher than U.S. students on reading tests, but the country doesn't have issues of poverty and second languages to address.

The universal access that has defined public education for the past century gains a new appreciation when American educators visit schools abroad. In some countries, fewer than 10 percent of the children who start in the equivalent of kindergarten make it to what Virginia's Barham calls an "academic 12th grade," compared to 72 percent in the United States. Comprehensive testing in the 8th grade often determines whether the student will head down an academic or vocational track.

The traveling educators contend the comparisons between the U.S. public schools and foreign education systems--which often are used to point to the failures of American schools--are largely invalid.

"I tell my students when you talk about how a foreign country educates people, it becomes very difficult to leave your paradigm, because we're not even starting in the same places as to what our objectives are," Collier says.

Houston concurs. "Someone may say, 'Why don't we do schools more like the Japanese?' Well, it's because we're not Japanese; we don't have their culture. To do it like they do it would mean you'd have to adopt their cultural values, and we as Americans are not about to do that.

"On the other hand you say, 'What can we glean?'" Houston adds, "and then you bring that back and talk about it or write about it."

Shared Skepticism

During some recent travels abroad, U.S. administrators have noted with some amusement that No Child Left Behind now is being translated into other languages.

For example, in England, a national directive was being developed in 1999 to create a larger separation between academic instruction and vocational training, mirroring other countries' practices.

"They did this without consulting much the people who run the schools," says Cirasuolo. "It struck a responsive chord. In this nation, public policy is being made without much consideration given to the perspectives of the superintendents of schools."

Cirasuolo recalls one instance in which the education minister told England's school administrators he didn't consult them because he didn't believe they were doing a good job. Cirasuolo says the administrators listened passively. Later, a British colleague told him: "They can issue all of the white papers they want. Let's see how they can carry them out without our help."

"It was a classic case of passive resistance, which I think is happening to a certain extent with No Child Left Behind. Resistance isn't the right word, but there's a lot of skepticism," says Cirasuolo, who has visited three African countries on International Seminar for Schooling trips and England as part of an annual exchange involving the leadership of AASA and its British equivalent.

In Italy, Miles Turner drew some parallels to home as he observed a national debate of the country's most comprehensive school reforms since the 1920s.

"They were saying 'greater parental choice, more flexibility, portfolios, greater testing.' We were saying, 'Hmm, no bambino left behind,'" says Turner. "It seems like in some respects, we were similar and in others, we are a world apart."

Deal With Public Perceptions Before and After You Travel.

Even in the best economic times, school administrators can face public criticism for using tax dollars to finance out-of-district travel.

Paul Houston, executive director of AASA, concedes there's always the potential of public criticism over the cost-benefit ratio of an overseas study trip.

"We're finding trouble with people even traveling domestically to go to meetings in this sort of climate," says Houston, who earlier served as superintendent in Princeton, N.J., Riverside, Calif., and Tucson, Ariz. "My counter-argument is that these are the very times when that sort of investment makes the most sense because there's a tendency when things get tight to hunker down and close yourself in.

"You also close off yourself from looking at broader options to problems you're facing. It's like the advice you get from investment people. When the market's down, it's a good time to invest. In many ways, when money is tight, it's time to invest in staff development activities, whether domestic issues or international travel."

Joseph Cirasuolo, who served as AASA president in 1999-2000, echoes Houston's observations, noting that most of his overseas trips came at a time when the country's economic climate was more robust. Public perceptions in fiscally challenged times differ. "I would suspect that even with somebody else paying for it, a superintendent going out of the country could be a problem," he says.

Positive Press

Many administrators head off criticism through accountability and communication.

While he travels, James Egan, superintendent of the Southwestern Wisconsin School District in Hazel Green, Wis., keeps in touch with his staff through e-mail. As soon as he knows he's going out of town, he contacts local newspaper reporters to let them know of his plans, often resulting in a balanced news story. Upon his return, he makes presentations in classrooms.

Joe McGeehan, superintendent of the Highline School District 401 in Burien, Wash., says although his travel to Germany was funded by Fulbright, he stresses the importance of such trips to local taxpayers.

McGeehan says a school leader must commit to creating something tangible that benefits the schools and students as a result of a foreign study trip. He secured private funding toward the creation of a high school aerospace and aviation program, an effort inspired by what he observed of vocational training in Germany.

Additionally, McGeehan has spoken about his trip to the local Chamber of Commerce, workforce development meetings and parent-teacher associations and written about what he learned in articles for district publications.

Public Criticism

Frank Barham, a former superintendent who now directs the Virginia School Boards Association, contends the financial issue is a moot point.

"We've got to learn about other educational systems, because the issue of public money as far as I'm concerned is irrelevant," says Barham. "People may say if it comes from public money, then it's wrong. The truth of the matter is it's either right of wrong irrespective of the funding source. You have to analyze it on its merit."

On the other hand, one cannot be spending inordinate sums of money to hopscotch around the world, Houston says.

"I tend to travel internationally once or twice a year and I've cut back to about once a year because things are so tight, I don't think I can justify multiple trips," he says.

Miles Turner, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Adminstrators, predicts superintendents will be reluctant to travel overseas because of their tight budgets. Turner himself is considering cutting overseas travel out of his budget for this year.

"They're very worthwhile trips, but in this economic environment, they're probably not going to be taken advantage of as fully as in the past years," he says.

Houston argues he would be less effective in his role if he did no traveling and that it's the job of a leader to view the world differently from other people.

"If they could see exactly the thing you're seeing, they don't need you," he says.

--Carol Brzozowski

Applying for Overseas Education Missions.

Does the notion of studying educational systems abroad intrigue you?

The two most common routes for K-12 school leaders run through the Fulbright Teacher and Administrator Exchange program and the International Seminar for Schooling, co-sponsored by AASA and the University of Texas.

International Seminar for Schooling

These trips take place each fall with Nolan Estes, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, responsible for creating the itineraries. The joint effort of AASA and the university started nearly a decade ago when separately run programs were consolidated.

ISS trips are typically funded in three ways. Most commonly, administrators finance their own trip. Some school leaders receive school board funding. State association executives may obtain funding from their organizations. Costs range from $4,000 to $5,000 per participant, and the trips operate with between 20 and 40 participants.

In November, the ISS trip took participating administrators to Spain, with an advanced study institute taking place in Morocco. The tentative plan for 2004 is to visit South America--probably Argentina and Brazil--and Antarctica. The latter is the only continent not covered by a previous trip.

Each trip features a seminar component where participants reflect on what they're learning. Participants hear presentations about a country's educational system and culture with tours of schools and the country's ministry of education.

Those interested in an ISS trip should contact Sherri Montgomery at AASA ([e-mail]; 703-875-0722).

Fulbright Teacher and Administrator Exchange

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, this program provides travel stipends for administrators' overseas trips, but has several pre-requisites that most public school leaders would easily satisfy. This includes the requirement that the applicant be in at least his or her third year of administrative work.

Named for the late Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the educator exchanges were established by Congress in 1946 as a vehicle for public officials to observe and comprehend institutions, cultures and societies of other peoples. Fulbright participants usually lodge in a home, hosted by a local educator.

The application process is competitive. Roberta Croll, outreach specialist for the Fulbright Teacher and Administrator Exchange, says administrators have a one-in-three chance of being selected.

Fulbright options include:

* The Superintendent Seminar in Germany, which is offered every other year (including 2004) for superintendents and assistant superintendents who offer German language studies in their school district. Anyone interested can be placed on a mailing list by contacting Croll at [e-mail] or at 202-314-3527.

* The Argentina Administrator Program, in which participants each year shadow an administrator counterpart for three to six weeks. The Argentine administrator visits the United States for a comparable experience.

* Other administrator exchange offered annually send U.S. school leaders for six weeks to Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Mexico, Romania, Slovak Republic, Thailand, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

* Hosting programs in which school districts or schools host administrators from Oman, Jordan or Uruguay for six weeks as they study the U.S. school system.

The deadline for applications to most Fulbright programs is Oct. 15. Occasionally special programs are arranged on short notice with varying deadlines. For complete details, access www.fulbrightexchanges.org and click on "other opportunities."

--Carol Brzozowski

RELATED ARTICLE: Points for viewing and points of view.

BY CHERYL GRANADE SULLIVAN

Many of us have read and spoken about using different lenses to capture different aspects of a situation. We've emphasized taking multiple considerations into account when making decisions.

A trip to Vietnam in the fall of 2002 for the AASA Invitational International Seminar on Schooling taught a group of American educational leaders that entertaining the viewpoints of others may mean increasing our own points for viewing. Though we knew Ho Chi Minh City was on the itinerary, our group of superintendents, professors and school board members was amazed to find ourselves headed to the site we knew as Saigon. Many recalled the war there, and one in our midst had been a helicopter pilot in the Mekong Delta.

Leaving the Bus

As we rode into Ho Chi Minh City on a comfortable, air-conditioned bus, we noticed a city teeming with people, bustling with the more than three million motor scooters that hit the streets each day. We also saw with a bit of uneasiness that living conditions were rather dilapidated, and poverty was rampant. Some began to wonder what the accommodations would be like. And in what state would we find the schools and children? Others wondered about the reception that Americans would receive in a country that had suffered so during a war that was still recent in their memory and ours.

The first lesson we learned was that we would have no answers until we got off the bus. As we entered our hotel, we were escorted to a balcony where some of the most beautiful children in the world stood attired in traditional Vietnamese dress. The lovely young girls greeted us with fragrant leis and smiles. In many cases the warm welcome included hugs and kisses on the cheek.

The following day, we visited a fabulous kindergarten located in what had been the former home of the country's vice president. The students did not let us stand apart. They quickly involved us in fishing in their tank of plastic fish, shopping at play stores and sharing their story time. Language became no barrier as smiles connected visitor and pupil. Students presented handmade presents, and a group of American school board members sang. We were learning that getting into the same room rather than observing from above and afar made a difference in what we could see, and it changed our points of view.

We derived a similar lesson from that initially intimidating motor scooter traffic. We looked out from the bus windows to see entire families aboard one scooter. Huge boxes were strapped on and transported with seeming ease. We could see no pattern to the way the vehicles darted in and out.

Getting on the Road

It was only when we got onto the roads in pedicabs that the point from which we were viewing all of this changed. Suddenly, we realized that drivers could detect spaces just the right size for moving through the hordes. We saw how drivers varied speed to keep each scooter moving along with others and to get ahead of some. We also felt the exhilaration of being art of all of that motion and recognized that merely moving through the streets took skill--and a lot of nerve.

And all of a sudden we could see into buildings and smell the aroma of meals cooking. Structures that looked similar from afar really had their own unique characteristics. Our conversation changed based on that ride. We had new points of view about the living around us.

For four of us, an evening stroll down the main street of town altered our sense of the country and its life even further. Without bus or pedicab, we crossed the street on our own. Oh, you might say, any child--could do that. Well, it did take a child--an energetic Vietnamese boy who was trying to sell us ball caps--to explain the strategy for street crossing to us. We hesitated, trying to figure out how to cross a thoroughfare thick with motor scooters, when the teen-ager said to us, "Are you going to cross the street?" Upon hearing our answer, he emphatically stated, "Then don't stop. Keep moving." With him barking those orders beside us all the way, we stepped into the traffic and kept walking.

The key to crossing the street in Ho Chi Minh City was to be part of the motion. Because we were moving just as all the vehicles were moving, dodging and passing and going with the flow were all possible. To have stopped would have certainly meant that someone or something would have been hit because of the broken momentum. We had to be literally in--not beside or above--the action to understand. Our change in the place where we viewed that action made all the difference.

All of the viewing points were needed to enable us to experience the richness of Vietnam. We really did need that global view from the bus. It also was crucial to get into classrooms and relationships face-to-face.

Further, our going with the flow was not enough. We had to be in the flow of traffic to appreciate it fully.

Leadership Lessons

Our world of schools and schooling in the United States requires the same mobility for us. We might ask: In what ways do we need to afford ourselves a big, comfortable vantage point comparable to that bus? What can we learn as we use that point for viewing? At what stages must we join the traffic--that is, the day-to-day life inside schools--to understand directly what that world encompasses right now? And when must we, perhaps fearlessly and perhaps fearfully, become a direct participant in what is going on?

We are quick to develop and announce our points of view. Perhaps we need to be just as energetic about trying out and diversifying our points for viewing.

Cheryl Sullivan is an educational consultant and the author of How to Mentor in the Midst of Change (ASCD). She con be reached al 2221 Fair Oaks Road, Decatur, GA 30033. E-mail: [e-mail]

Carol Brzozowski is a free-lance education writer based in Coral Springs, Fla. E-mail: brzozowski @aol.com