Watch highlights from the first teacher training in Lafayette, Louisiana.
The LIAISON program is a project of the World Studies Institute of Louisiana that is funded primarily by the Centre de la Francophonie des Amériques. LIAISON provides a project-based curriculum that encourages curiosity through discovery of what joins and separates participant communities. Through online collaboration students discover human ecology by investigating their own and partner LIAISON communities. This investigation incubates a work force with a world vision to apply its skills in a myriad of new careers in cultural economy, health-care, humanitarian aid, and the sciences.
By identifying and linking the schools of cultural partners in different countries, LIAISON encourages positive cultural identity and offers opportunities to develop empathy, dignity, hope and the motivation to improve the state of their own and partner communities.
The current LIAISON pilot connects schools in Lafayette and St. Martinville (Louisiana), Clair (New Brunswick, Canada), Providence (Rhode Island) and Jacmel and Port-au-Prince (Haiti); all sharing a cultural, historic and linguistic heritage. These schools are collaborating with project-based curricula that include language, social studies and science. The fact one pilot school is located in Jacmel (Haiti) offers unexpected opportunities. The pilot also includes the development of a curriculum wiki, adding yet another tool for the teachers in each school.
LIAISON has a developed curricula and a methodology for connecting culturally similar and diverse classrooms. LIAISON currently uses the Google apps education edition as its work product platform provided by Lafayette non-profit, Lafayette Commons.
