Sixteen UF education majors participated in the 2015 UF in Paris: Teach the World study abroad program, May 2-16, 2015 at the prestigious Marymount International School. This is the sixth year of the program that has now taken more than 100 students to Rome and Paris. A joint program between the College of Education and the College of the Arts, it was started in Rome at the Ambrit International School in 2010 by Dr. Russell Robinson, director and professor of music education, and his wife, Brenda Robinson, co-director, after Robinson had been a consultant and speaker for numerous international school conferences around the world.
After two years in Rome and two years in Paris, the host schools formally agreed to a plan of alternating years between the schools, thus allowing some students to participate in the program in two successive years in different cities. Dates are now set for Teach the World VII in 2016 at the Ambrit International School of Rome and Teach the World VIII in 2017 at the Marymount International School of Paris. The premise of the program is to provide student interns with cultural and educational experiences in English-speaking international school environments.
“These experiences offer education students life-changing experiences, not only in Paris and Rome, but in these prestigious international schools,” said Robinson. “Both Marymount and Ambrit are high achieving schools for Pre-K through 8th grade students."
The schools have a similar profile of 500 students, 70+ faculty and over 30 countries represented in their student population. "It has been our privilege over the past six years to see how these students have an immediate awareness of the many differences and teaching opportunities at these international schools," said Robinson. "The reviews of UF’s interns by the host school cooperating teachers have been extremely positive. Teach the World has become a popular and highly selective study abroad program over the past six years, and as a result, our interns have been superb representatives of our colleges and the university.”
To learn more about the program, contact Dr. Robinson at rlrob@ufl.edu.
