Students compared what they saw, heard, and felt at school with what students in Florida observed in their surroundings.
It’s the end of January and the beginning of a new year. In Macedonia, the spring semester of school has just begun, and at Krste Petkov Misirkov, the Dreams and Friendship Exchange is gearing up to explore new themes. In the fall, we discovered details about our friends in Florida and, together, examined our schools, families, and communities. Over the next few months, we will engage in dialogue about our cultures, languages, rights, and dreams.
This spring, as we consider topics that move us further towards the heart of the initiative—mutual understanding—our explorations from the fall will serve us well. Beginning the project with themes like All About Me and My School helped students build friendships and trust without requiring too much vulnerability. The concrete nature of the fall’s topics also helped students establish the skills of observation and communication, which arguably is the most significant outcome of this program and intercultural exchanges in general.
If understanding is the heart of an intercultural exchange, observation and communication are the hands. They make it happen. Before we can attempt to understand, we must first learn to stop and objectively observe the world around us and then communicate what we find. Observation and communication are essential to understanding our own rights (or lack of) and dreams, not to mention the rights (or lack of) and dreams of others. These skills are the foundation of compassionate and productive dialogue, which ultimately, is why initiatives like the Dreams and Friendship Exchange are important to the global community.
In his poem, “Theme for English B,” Langston Hughes writes, “I guess I’m what I feel and see and hear.” The poem goes on to express what we are learning through the process of the Dreams and Friendship Exchange — that sharing concrete details from our lives, like what we see, hear, and feel, can help us realize that no matter our differences, we are all a part of each other and we all have hopes and dreams.
After studying “Theme for English B” in October, students practiced observing their surroundings at school and sharing their findings with the help of a camera. The following short film is a reading of Hughes’ poem over primarily student-shot-and-directed footage taken around the Krste Petkov Misirkov campus.
* Read this article on the official blog of the Dreams and Friendship Exchange here. To learn more about the Dreams and Friendship Exchange, please read our initial blog.
* The views expressed on this site do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations. They are the observations and reflections of someone who likes good stories.