Michele Mohamed held on to her dream as long as she could.
But when officials at the Edmonds Homeschool Resource Center told her there was no money to continue her World Studies program last year, she felt she had hit a dead end.
“I thought it was over,” Mohamed said.
“It was a suggestion from a parent that I continue the program from my home that kept it going.”
As a certified teacher and principal who home schooled her five children, as well as three years of designing and leading the former Cyberschool World Studies program under her belt, Mohamed said she couldn’t come up with a reason not to continue the program.
“With our national climate, I thought: I just have to keep this going,” Mohamed said.
With that in mind, Mohamed converted a large room in her home into a classroom and titled the new program “Learning Across Borders.”
The class began Oct. 1, 2003, and Mohamed already has 12 students enrolled in the weekly after-school class or in independent study. Tuition is $70 per student for each trimester and is open to all interested students.
Currently, she is hunting for grants to further the program and hopes to eventually move the classroom from her home to a school setting.
“I think it will grow slowly. People’s budgets now are tighter, their time is tighter, but I think if people are of the global spirit, they will find the program,” Mohamed said.
Learning Across Borders closely mirrors Mohamed’s Cyberschool program, and includes many of the same activities.
The focus primarily is understanding the world’s cultures and the issues surrounding them, but the subject is supplemented through English, science, social studies and math curriculum.
The underlying goal is to facilitate communication between kids from all over the world, Mohamed said, and to make future international relations easier.
To do this, Mohamed includes a world-wide program in her class that does just that. The International Education And Resource Network connects kids of similar ages through a common subject of study and the Internet. Throughout the year, students share what they have learned through e-mail, letters and packages sent back and forth.
Recently, Mohamed’s class received edible, dried worms from Botswana, an aboriginal painted boomerang from Africa and a recipe for the national biscuit from Australia.
“It really helps them get a global perspective and feel the connection, to see for themselves the similarities,” Mohamed said.
The class also has received a grant from the Snohomish County Public Utilities District to create and present a 45-minute workshop on water for students at Martha Lake Elementary School.
In April, the class will spend two days at the University of Washington’s Model United Nations seminar learning first-hand what it is like to be delegates for foreign countries.
“It’s a wonderful way for kids to put on someone else’s hat, or another country’s hat,” Mohamed said. “They really have to get in there and act like they’re from that country and work out the issues.”
Both in and out of the classroom, Mohamed serves as an example of the mixed cultures and experiences she hopes to encourage her students to learn about.
“I’ve been in the majority as a white American, and I’ve been in the minority as a Muslim American. My whole life has been walking through these two worlds,” Mohamed said.
“I fell our kids just have to have a vision past the United States.”
For more information about Learning Across Borders, call or e-mail Michele Mohamed at 425-742-2150 mimohamed@hotmail.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
