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Building Bridges to the East Title
Building Bridges to the East Title		Building Bridges to the East Title

March, 1999

MFF - Spotlight - Building Bridges to the East Ten Milken Educators recently travelled to the former Soviet Union to study the educational system. What they got was an education in itself — and an experience they will never forget.

A boy stands in front of the classroom running a paintbrush over an imaginary fence. Another boy walks up to him.

"Hello, Tom," says the second boy. "I'm going swimming. Don't you wish you could? But of course you'd rather work."

Click on image for home video of Cindy Field's trip to Uzbekistan - QT 3:20 (Video courtesy of Cindy Field)
"What do you call work?" says the boy named Tom, who goes on painting, as if it's not a chore at all, but a fascinating playtime activity. This intrigues the other boy, who starts begging Tom for a chance to paint the fence. And so unfolds one of the most famous scenes in all of American literature, from one of the most quintessentially American books ever written: Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Yet this scene, which was performed last October for Milken Educator Cindy Field (CT '93), did not involve American students, nor did it take place in an American classroom. The actors were Uzbekistani students, in a classroom in Samarkand, a city whose 25 centuries of history conjure up such names as Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan.

And though the students' English pronunciation was thickly accented and the production values minimal, the scene will no doubt remain a memorable one for Cindy Field, the Connecticut Yankee educator who recently spent two weeks in a distant land, learning how the students there learn.

Student demonstrates science experiment
A student demonstrates a chemistry lesson in a classroom in Russia
(Photo courtesy of Sarah Powley)
Field was one of twenty-eight educators from around the United States selected last year by the American Council of Teachers of Russian/American Council for Collaboration in Education and Language Study (ACTR/ACCELS) to travel for two weeks to different regions of the former Soviet Union, visiting schools and learning about the educational system there (ACTR/ACCELS recently changed its organization name to the American Councils for International Education (ACIE)).

To find candidates for this annual program, which is funded by the United States Information Agency (USIA) with the goal of fostering mutual understanding between educators in the United States and the former Soviet Union, ACTR/ACCELS sought the most outstanding teachers in the country. Not surprisingly, eleven of those selected were Milken Educator Award recipients.

Host Family
Milken Educators Sharon Ladner (left, seated on sofa) and Jim Kerr (right, seated on sofa) with their host family in Kyrgysztan
(Photo courtesy of Dr. James Kerr)
In addition to Field, the Milken Educators involved in the program were:

An eleventh Milken Educator, William Hector (IL '97), was also selected, but could not make the trip due to a last-minute illness.

Most of Cindy Field's time in Uzbekistan was spent in Samarkand, the second largest city in the country. Hosted by a 7th form (equivalent to 7th grade) English teacher at a school that specializes in teaching English, Field was impressed by how fluent the students were for their age and grade level.

"Many students begin to learn English in the first form," said Field. "By the time they are in the 7th form, they're speaking English fairly fluently. This is something we certainly could learn from them. Our students should begin learning another language when they're younger and they too would be more fluent when they're older."

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