Wood to tour Vietnam
to help teach others
Thursday, June 2, 2005
Bethany Wood of Somerville teaches American
literature of the Vietnam War to high school students, using works by Tim
O'Brien and others who have been there. This summer, she'll tour Vietnam
to craft her own firsthand understanding of its culture and people. She
will also visit Thailand and Cambodia. She is one of 47 teachers in the
Boston Public Schools to win a Fund for Teachers/Boston grant for summer
travel and study from the Boston Plan for Excellence, the city's local education
foundation.
"Because of my own limited knowledge
about Vietnam, when I present these works by American writers, I present
a stagnant and static history," said Wood, who teaches at Another Course
to College in Brighton. "The story is one-dimensional, beginning and
ending with the war and told only through American voices. I have come to
realize I am not telling the whole story. I am not telling the Vietnamese
story."
Over four weeks, Wood will visit dozens of
historical and cultural sites, both to learn and to gather materials, particularly
works by Vietnamese authors, for her course. She'll start in Ho Chi Minh
City (formerly Saigon) and visit Hoi An, from which she'll take excursions
to My Son and My Lai. On her journey from south to north, she'll venture
to the Imperial City of Hue and then to Hanoi, with its many museums, temples,
parks and theaters. Along the way, she will visit sites connected with the
war: the Demilitarized Zone and the Truong Son National Cemetery, where
11,000 Vietnamese soldiers are buried; she'll also stay with a Vietnamese
family in the Mekong Delta.
"I especially want to see firsthand the
landscape of the Mekong Delta, vividly described by so many American soldiers,"
she explained. "A home stay there is really important. I want to hear
the stories from Vietnamese voices to complement the stories that I know."
For part of her trip, she will be with a tour,
but for part of it, she will travel alone. "I am deliberately stepping
out of my 'comfort zone' and expect to feel some disequilibrium, an imbalance,
in this new culture," she said. "But I also expect that the experience
will challenge my thinking as a teacher and as a woman, test my own limits
and make me contemplate my life from new directions."
Fund for Teachers/Boston is a joint project
of the Boston Plan for Excellence and the Boston Public Schools, and this
is the second year the partnership has awarded grants to teachers in the
city's public schools. For summer 2005, 47 teachers have won $172,500 in
grants to visit 24 foreign countries and more than 20 states. Fund for Teachers/Boston
is affiliated with the national Fund for Teachers foundation and is administered
by the Boston Plan for Excellence. |
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