Irish eyes are watching — and learning

Principals from Northern Ireland arrive in county to study school system as part of two-nation partnership

Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Naomi Brookner⁄The Gazette In a second-grade class at Bel Pre Elementary School, Eileen Donaghy, a principal from Northern Ireland, takes notes Tuesday morning during a visit to the school.

The Regional Training Unit of Northern Ireland and Montgomery County Public Schools formed a partnership about three years ago when the Regional Training Unit was searching for a successful American school system from which they could learn. Montgomery County was a top choice, said Byron Evans, a senior advisor for RTU.

‘‘It took us a long time to find a school district in the states that wanted to play ball with us,” Evans said.

However, principals on both sides of the Atlantic were eager to travel and learn from one another. Right away, groups from Northern Ireland were chosen to travel to Montgomery County and become paired with people in the same school level and interests.

Sandra Shmookler, special assistant to the chief operating officer for MCPS, said that the county school system was well deserving of this honor to work with Northern Ireland.

‘‘Our school system is one of the best public school systems in the country,” Shmookler said. ‘‘We have an outstanding reputation, [which is] well deserved because our teachers and principals are so superb and work so hard.”

During a welcome reception Monday, principals said they were very eager to see how someone else does their job.

‘‘It’s an exciting opportunity to have someone from another country shadow you to see what it is we do every day,” said Henry R. Johnson, principal of Northwood High School in Silver Spring.

Carmen van Zutphen, principal at Bel Pre Elementary School, said international partnerships like this help emphasize the need for global communication.

‘‘Education has become an international community as everything in the world today [has] shrunk,” van Zutphen said.

The Irish principals will combine what they’ve learned and issue a report, which will be presented to the Department of Education, said Eileen Donaghy, principal of St. Mary’s Primary School in Bellaghy, Northern Ireland.

‘‘It’s a brilliant opportunity to find out about educational system different than our own,” Donaghy said. She also hopes to establish a continued dialogue between the schools and their students and teachers, as well.

While 10 principals will host a Northern Ireland principal, a goal is to also get the American principals overseas in the next year. The Fulbright Program, which helps students and teachers travel to learn about education in other areas, will help the county teachers financially, but much of the money will have to come out of county teachers’ pockets.

Marcia Fineman, principal at Farmland Elementary in Rockville, hosted one teacher from Northern Ireland and was able to travel to Europe with other county principals twice in previous years.

‘‘The value of going was to really cement the similarities and differences and look at the type of things to take away,” Fineman said.

Taking things back to one’s own school was paramount in the program and Fineman said she implemented several things in her school after being in Northern Ireland. One of the things was the increase in class assemblies. She said that in Northern Ireland they did a great job of recognizing students for accomplishments during these assemblies.

‘‘Part of our school mission is that students behave responsibility and contribute to the work [in the school] and the assembly is a way to show that students are doing that and kids have a chance to make a difference,” she said.

Barbara Haughey, principal at Ashburton Elementary School in Bethesda, also had a chance to travel to Ireland twice and said the use of technology was something that was both similar and somewhat different in the school systems.

‘‘[Principals from Northern Ireland] have been very much interested in technology and advancing the education system,” she said. ‘‘We were interested in resources, [while] they were interested in the delineation of resources we had.”

Since Northern Ireland does not have a middle school system in place, all the teachers were paired with elementary and high schools in the county. High schools hosting this year include Northwood, Walter Johnson, James Hubert Blake, Thomas S. Wootton and Winston Churchill and Rockville. The elementary schools participating are Bel Pre, Mill Creek Towne, Strathmore and Carl Sandburg Learning Center, which is a kindergarten through grade 5 special-needs school.

However, Montgomery County is no stranger to foreign visitors. In fact, throughout the years MCPS has also used the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program to host teachers from every part of the world. Shmookler also emphasized that part of the foreign teacher’s and principal’s experience is to see how diverse Montgomery County is.

‘‘We are the world,” said Shmookler, noting that students in the school system speak between 140-150 different native languages.

But despite that, Shmookler said that the similarities between county schools and others around the globe are what fascinate people the most.

‘‘Kids are kids, people are people and it’s wonderful,” she said.