BUILDING BRIDGES: Andrea Dinan, left, director of the PHS Ideas Center, and PHS social studies teacher Christine Carbone have led an English language Boot Camp program in the city of Merida, Mexico during spring break week over the past six years. They have forged strong alliances between their students at PHS and the school in Merida. (Photo courtesy of Andrea Dinan)

By Donald Gilpin

Andrea Dinan, director of the Ideas Center for tutoring at Princeton High School (PHS), and PHS social studies teacher Christine Carbone, spent their spring vacation week in the city of Merida, Mexico, leading an English language Boot Camp program for a high school populated mainly by Mayan and itinerant workers.

The high school, Unidad Academica Bachillerato con Interaccion Comunitaria (UABIC), helps to prepare the students to take the college entrance exam in June, and the Boot Camp program, now in its sixth year, is the outgrowth of a Fulbright Distinguished Teachers Program award that Dinan received in 2016.

The two teachers worked with UABIC students daily and coordinated a number of electronic exchanges with PHS, including live Zooms and a pen pal letter program.

“Building Bridges, our English language camp, is a passion project that annually re-invigorates me and leaves me with more enthusiasm, empathy, and commitment for our work helping Spanish-speaking students at Princeton High School,” Dinan wrote in an email.

The UABIC school prioritizes service-learning and has spurred service projects that Dinan and Carbone have established at PHS. “The service programs at UABIC inspired us to push for our programming to go to the next level,” said Dinan. “We offer professional development and support to teachers district-wide to create new service projects with their students.”

She continued, “Since we visited Merida we have received three grants for our Generation 1 Club from the National Youth Leadership Council for service activities in our school and community.”

Both Dinan and Carbone work with first generation students on college and career readiness, and both have been teaching an immersive summer English language learner program for more than 10 years. Dinan works in the counseling department and coordinates tutoring programs as well as community service and service learning programs. Carbone teaches many English language learners in her history courses and in her psychology-based human behavior course.

Dinan described the origins of their current alliance with UABIC. “In 2016, PHS did not have a robust ELL (English Language Learners) program,” Dinan wrote. “I had spent a handful of summers in Guatemala exploring where our students came from and learning Spanish.”

She traveled to conferences and communicated with refugee groups around the U.S., seeking supports for her students at PHS. Deciding to explore programming in other countries, Dinan applied and was awarded the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching, and she embarked to Merida in 2016.

Supported by the Rotary Club of Princeton Corridor, of which she was a member and past president, Dinan was able to work with the Club de Rotario in Merida and to visit and make connections with educators and administrators throughout the state of Yucatan.

She was soon drawn to the UABIC. “The school addressed all of the obstacles that their migrant, indigenous, and impoverished students experienced, with wrap-around services and longer school days,” said Dinan. “Additionally, they were a service-learning school and each semester was dedicated to a different service project involving action in the community. It was a perfect match for my interests and research.”

Dinan interviewed students, observed classes, and attended service projects at UABIC. When she asked the principal, Guillermo Gil, how she could repay them, he suggested assistance in English, and in 2017 Dinan enlisted Carbone to help her in creating the English language project, which has continued ever since. More than 50 students work with Dinan and Carbone for a week each spring and connect with their PHS students via Zoom and pen pal letters.

Carbone described traveling to Merida in 2017 to visit Dinan on her Fulbright project. “I immediately fell in love with the city, the people, and the culture of Merida,” she wrote. “That summer Andrea approached me about co-creating an English immersion program with her that we could run in Merida.”

They worked for the next month to create the program and launched their first camp in 2018 with a program integrating games, art, and conversational English to help students prepare for their university entrance exams.

“The first year we focused our work on highlighting the service-learning aspects of the school,” Carbone said. “Students each selected a project run at the school, wrote articles, and illustrated pictures to highlight the project. In 2019 our focus was the city of Merida. Students created the ABCs of Merida, and other topics included storytelling and poetry.”

Dinan’s work in Merida has encouraged her to work on refugee and other support programs in the Central Jersey area. “The service projects at UABIC were inspirations for new programming that we introduced in our own school,” she said. “I have continued to be very active with Fulbright and have served as a mentor and presented at many conferences for incoming awardees.”

Dinan and Carbone have also hosted Gil on a visit from Merida to PHS. “He was very impressed with Princeton and loved the community and meeting the students,” Carbone wrote. “He gave the ELL students a motivational speech in Spanish.”

Last year an alumnus from their UABIC summer program was awarded a grant to visit the University of Michigan. During his interviews with TV and radio stations he showed a picture of Dinan and Carbone and noted his appreciation for their inspiration. “Best yet, he is now completing his teaching hours to become a dual language teacher and was able to assist us in the program this year,” Dinan reported.

“Thanks to Princeton Public Schools, the Rotary Club of Princeton Corridor, and the Fulbright Distinguished Awards, we have been able to build a lasting partnership that will benefit both districts and all of our students,” she added. “We are so grateful.”