Bangladesh trip helps Springs teacher connect students

On a Web page frequented by a class of Colorado Springs students and their teacher, there is a message of sadness and hope from a young Afghan boy who spent a year as an exchange student in Denver.

He questioned the violence, wondering why not all children can know peace.

“Since we have been able to recognize our right from our left, we have seen fighting in our country, we have heard the sounds of bullets,” the boy, who is listed on the site as Fazilhaq, wrote. “We’ve lived like birds migrating from one place to another to save our lives, and I know every kid in Afghanistan has grown up this way. Why can’t we live in peace?”

And in response, there are messages of encouragement from students in Colorado Springs, who tell the boy that he has “changed the world in a way,” that his words are “being heard across the world and taken to heart.”

It’s precisely the kind of interaction Jack Strelec, 57, envisioned when he began seeking opportunities for his students to communicate with other teens around the globe.

Strelec, who has been teaching for three years at Nikola Tesla Education Opportunity Center and 18 years in total, said it is increasingly important for people in different countries to understand each other as the world becomes increasingly globalized. And this starts with students.

The teacher’s vision got a boost this spring when the California-based nonprofit U.S. Relief International took notice and sent him on a fully funded trip to Bangladesh, where he spent about three weeks training teachers to use technology to connect with students internationally.

Strelec returned in April with strengthened relationships and more focus on how to bring students together. He is working with D-11’s social studies curriculum facilitator, Margaret Altoff, to expand his teaching practices into other social studies classrooms in the district.

D-11 is watching to see if the program could enhance other social studies curricula, Altoff said.

Strelec hopes he’ll have the chance to visit other countries to form relationships with teachers as he did in Bangladesh.

“I got to meet these people, hug them and go to eat dinner with them and get good relationships going with them,” Strelec said. “There’s nothing like being there.”
Strelec was one of two teachers sent for a foreign exchange through U.S. Relief International, said Tali Klein, International Education Programs Coordinator for the organization.

Strelec’s commitment to creating relationships between students is crucial as the world becomes a global community, Klein said.

“It’s important that, especially starting with youth, that they learn about other cultures,” she said. “All they have is what they see in movies and media. They have different preconceptions of other cultures, but as they meet each other they find they have a lot of similarities. So it’s also for building those bridges.”

Brennan Hekkers, 17, one of Strelec’s former students, said that speaking with students in Afghanistan and Bangladesh through Instant Messenger and Skype taught him more than any book or news broadcast could.

“If you want to explore the world, you just can’t read textbooks and say, ‘Well, this is how this goes and this is how that goes,’” he said.

“I learned that it doesn’t matter where you go in life, but people will always be friendly; they will always help you out no matter what you need. The news, television, CNN, all those places,  they all display hate. They show what’s going on with the war, but they don’t show what’s going on with the people themselves, the civilians trying to get on with their lives.”

Perhaps this is the key to a more peaceful world: raising youths who are more open to and understanding of other cultures and their people, Klein said.

Strelec certainly thinks so. If a boy spends a year in America and returns home to Afghanistan to tell others what it’s like to walk down the street without worrying about bombings, maybe he will work toward change in his own country.

If an entire generation of students is raised understanding each others’ differences, imagine the problems that could be solved, he said.

“I’ve always believed in peace,” Strelec said. “This is just one way of doing it.”