In the small town of Missour in eastern Morocco, Erin Sullivan asked her English class last fall to break into small groups. Stand up, why do we need to move? they said.
Cooperative, or group learning, is a foreign concept to students at the Lycee Mixte de Missour, said Sullivan, who teaches English to speakers of other languages at Glen Burnie High School.
It was one of the lessons she learned while spending six weeks in the small mountain town on a teacher exchange. Now Sullivan's host on that trip is in the same position of learning and teaching.
Sakina El Khayari arrived in the United States on Feb. 11 for her six-week visit to observe and teach Sullivan's classes as part of the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program, created to foster understanding between the United States and other countries.
El Khayari, 34, decided to apply after her husband, Abdellatif El Moncef, spent six months in Missour last year. El Moncef teaches at her school, and the couple have a 5-year-old daughter, Khawla.
Their school has a computer lab but no computers in the classroom. At Glen Burnie, Sullivan has a computer on her desk and an overhead projector.
"It makes the work easier," El Khayari said of the computers. She plans to buy a projector before she returns to Morocco so that she can connect it to her husband's laptop and use it to give presentations.
El Khayari is living with Sullivan in Glen Burnie during her stay. Sullivan lives with her brother and sister, which erased her misconception that Americans are not close to their families, El Khayari said.
Sullivan said she felt lost visiting El Khayari's friends and family because she does not know Arabic. Sullivan fared better at the Moroccan school because French - which she does know - is spoken at most schools in Morocco.
She liked the way El Khayari taught grammar, Sullivan said, and she plans to use some of those lessons at Glen Burnie. Sullivan also found that students were eager to know more about her and that Moroccans were open to her visit.
"For me, I was surprised by how many misconceptions they had about how we feel" toward Muslims, Sullivan said.
The teachers found few differences between their students, although El Khayari said she has been surprised by the amount of freedom her American students have. Classroom order is strictly enforced in Morocco, where gum-chewing and eating in the classroom are forbidden.
