Permanently influenced by her unique experience in Fiji, Ms. Shays confessed that, "Returning to the Peace Corps after many years of teaching in the school system was incredible." As Director of the World Wise Schools, Ms. Shays brings foreign cultures into the classrooms across the US through the eyes of a Peace Corps volunteer. "The Peace Corps, which brings people together for a common good," has extended its borders to reach kids everywhere.
The program begins when a teacher from any school district, public or private, wealthy or poor expresses an interest in making "the match." The match is a Peace Corps volunteer who connects with the class. The volunteer shares with the class letters, photographs, and artwork about their experience as well as information about the relationships that they have had with the people in other countries. This partnership is followed up by a curriculum of "Destination" videos and study guides. To a student, the idea of videos and study guides may sound a bit dry, but education actually comes alive in the discussion with the Peace Corps volunteer who shares his/her experiences and gets students to develop an understanding and respect for the country and the people they were introduced to. The students learn a life reality of a new culture which, in many respects, can be more exciting than what comes out of a textbook. The cultures are exciting because they are different. Through World Wise Schools, children learn that differences are good, not reasons to exclude or hate.
The Peace Corps principles of understanding and respect of differences is certainly one that should stay with students as they enter high school and even the adult world. Hopefully, those who have been exposed to World Wise Schools will begin to help change the way many citizens in the US look at those who are different from them. Widespread ignorance creates disrespect for differences. Those who are ignorant have never had the opportunity to work with someone from another country as they dig a fishing pond -- they have never been able to sit around a campfire and trade stories with people of distant cultures. If these people had the opportunity to have some of these experiences, they would quickly realize that differences can be positive.
Hopefully, through the efforts of the Peace Corps and World Wise Schools, we will create a generation that is educated to a degree beyond the wisdom of their texkbooks and arithmetic facts. Hopefully, this generation will spread understanding of each other just as well as they understand how many electrons a hydrogen atom possesses. Finally, although we may seem not to have many similarities as far as our beliefs, our rituals, the color of our skin, etcetera, we nonetheless need to understand that we are all the same species, working for a common good on this planet together. We might as well do so peacefully.
