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Spotlights Elizabeth Dickson '06 University of Dayton Quarterly, Summer 2006 Children in Burma are typically named after the day of the week which they are born. Wednesday infants have two different possible names, one for babies born before noon and another for afternoon and evening babies. KFC is popular in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Meals there are served on dinner plates, as in a nice sit-down restaurant. Sometimes cruise ships cancel trips along the East African coast because of the threat of pirates. Such were the firsthand experiences that senior Elizabeth Dickson, a middle childhood education major, e-mailed weekly to students in Debbie Schlarb’s seventh-grade language arts classes at Van Buren Middle School in Kettering, Ohio. Dickson visited 11 countries, each for about five days, during a semester-at-sea experience fall semester (2005). At each stop, she sent her impressions to Schlarb’s students, who used a “Where in the World Is Miss Dickson?” map to keep tabs on her travels. After her trip, Dickson came to Van Buren to talk with students. “It was truly a wonderful, wonderful experience for our kids,” Schlarb said. “She heightened their awareness of what is going on in the world and made it real.” News that may have seemed distant to students intersected with Dickson’s travels in unexpected ways, Schlarb said. Dickson’s description of her visit to Robben Island, where former South African president Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for decades under apartheid laws, coincided with the death of American civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Soon after Dickson wrote of her ship canceling an excursion to Kenya because of the fear of maritime pirates, modern-day piracy was splashed across newspaper front pages when a gang attached and chased a cruise ship off the eastern coast of Africa. “A week later (pirates) are on CNN. The kids were very proud of themselves because they knew all about it,” Schlarb said. Instead of Kenya, Dickson ended up in Mauritius, an island nation east of Madagascar that she had never heard of but turned out to be one of her favorite stops. Traveling west to east, she also visited the Bahamas, Venezuela, Brazil, India, Hong Kong, Japan and Hawaii, ending her trip in San Diego. Through it all, she wrote messages for Schlarb’s students “thinking as a teacher. I was trying to spark their interest in being part of a world community.” Schlarb saw her students’ awareness heightened. After reading about the spread of avian flu in Southeast Asia, they became concerned for Dickson’s health as she approached the region. “They were most surprised when we sent mail to her in Burma,” Schlarb said. “Our mail was actually opened and gone through. The kids were very surprised by that.” Schlarb also pointed to significant writing gains students made during the experience. “The quality of their writing improved greatly. (Dickson) was a good model. As a class, we discussed the traits of letter writing as a means of communication. Her letters were rich with examples.” “I’ve been teaching for 30 years,” Schlarb said. “I think she’s going to be a wonderful teacher. I’m definitely impressed.” —Matthew Dewald (A longer version of this article appeared in the Spring 2006 Dayton Educator.)

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