Northville Teachers Build Connections With Haitian School

Helping students achieve and learn is a common trait found in school principals and teachers around the world. That’s why when , former Superintendent of , presented an opportunity to travel to Haiti for a week, Mary Meldrum jumped at the chance.

Meldrum is the Principal of in Northville, a special needs school. She, along with Malinda Demray, Psychologist for and Cooke School, and Shannon Schafer, an Old Village School Teacher, traveled from May 22-29 this year in an effort to learn and enhance teacher training, and to develop a long term relationship with a similar school in Jacmel, Haiti.

“I thought the trip was very beneficial,” said Schafer. “I felt it was important to share our knowledge, and if we have this opportunity, why not go for it.”

More trips to come

The trip was the first of three that Meldrum hopes to make. Preliminary plans for the next one are for October or November this year. An international educational board called Pazapa worked with Rezmierski for several years to raise funds for the trips to happen, but as Meldrum explained, Northville Public Schools will also do some fundraising to supplement all educational materials that will be sent to Jacmel.

“The first day we were able to just sit and talk with the staff, listen to them and learn from them and then we spent the rest of the days observing and working with students as much as we could, and learning about them,” said Meldrum.

The trio was also able to go on home visits, as some teachers in Haiti do, because many students there aren’t able to physically make it to the school for various reasons. Their plan was to go in and show respect to the teachers, students and the overall way of life of the people of Haiti and not have the assumption that they could do a lot to help the schools there. 

"I believe the trips will benefit (our) school district, as have other international trips such as our Afghan4Kids Program that we have been involved with through Kris Nedam, Amerman Teacher, for the last 15 years and the Fulbright International Exchange Program in Japan," said Rezmierski. "We know that the connection to these international countries, based on purposeful work and building bridges and connections, has immeasurably increased our staff's level of knowledge. These educators have provided excellent examples of success in programs and helping our students learn about students from that culture. What our students will gain is an appreciation of the complexity, poverty, and need that is a reality in Haiti, especially with the school for Handicapped Individuals."

The students that the Northville teachers visited ranged from children to young adults. Like the children in their own Northville schools, some had various degrees of cognitive mental impairment, physical disabilities and some were deaf. Meldrum and Schafer were able to communicate with the hearing impaired children through the use of sign language, and the rest of the language barrier was bridged because the program director in Jacmel spoke fluent English. He was able to translate for Meldrum and her crew.

“It is not a place where English is commonly spoken,” said Demray. “We did our best to communicate and we had translators.”

Demray said they came back with a massive list of educational supplies that the school in Jacmel needs, which includes everything from crayons, to teaching materials to musical instruments. They also came back with a sense of how different life between the two countries really is.

Adjusting to Haiti

“The heat and humidity of Haiti tends to strip away some of the superficial things we do here every day,” said Demray. “In 100 percent humidity my mascara will run down my face, so there is no point in blowing out my hair to walk around or play ball with the children under the Haiti sun. It is very different, but in a good way.”

The school in Jacmel, like many other parts of Haiti, is still showing signs of the massive earthquake, which occurred in January of 2010. The walls of the backside of the school are completely gone and many people in nearby Port Au Prince are still living in tents.

“After the earthquake many people stayed in their yards for a few months because they were afraid to go back in their houses because they were afraid of aftershocks,” said Meldrum. “You can still see all the damage it caused. They just can’t up and move, and they have no insurance to fix it all. It’s a completely different world.”

Schafer feels the biggest impact she noticed was the amount of needs the Haitian students have, and without the same resources students have here in the United States, it can be a lot harder for them: something that Meldrum and her Northville teachers hope to change one trip at a time.