Educational administration and policy faculty facilitate Egyptian delegation visit
Faculty in the Mary Frances Early College of Education’s educational administration and policy program worked with a delegation of school leaders from Egypt during a weeklong visit to Georgia, which focused on providing the delegation with an overview of the U.S. education system as well as professional development.
Ten elementary school principals who graduated at the top of Egypt’s national leadership academy spent the week visiting schools and meeting with educators and school administrators in both urban and rural Georgia school districts. The visit was made possible through partnerships with the Education Development Center (EDC) and the USAID Teach for Tomorrow Executive Study Tour.
“Our work with EDC really started in our partnership with school districts, with Gwinnett County Schools and the University, with the whole idea of bringing educator preparation programs and school districts together—that if we work together, we could better prepare leaders and teachers,” said Karen Bryant, director of the UGA Gwinnett campus and one of the liaisons of the visit.
On the first day of their visit, College of Education faculty members, school administrators and school district leadership teams gave presentations and held panels. Shelby Cosner, the Morrill M. Hall Chair in Educational Administration in the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy, gave a presentation on educational leadership to the delegation, and a representative from the Egyptian Ministry of Education presented about educational leadership in Egypt.
Despite some differences in the education systems in the U.S. and Egypt, such as class sizes and the types of leadership academies for educators, Bryant said that both the U.S. and Egyptian educators shared an interest in developing professional learning communities and cultivating more engaging instruction for students.
In the following days, the delegation visited classrooms in the Gwinnett County, Forsyth County, Morgan County, and Social Circle school districts and heard from school district leaders. Chandra Walker, executive director of leadership development in Gwinnett County Public Schools and a part-time instructor in the College’s educational leadership program, facilitated the visits in Gwinnett County, and members of the delegation connected with students and staff members from Egypt during one of the school visits in Gwinnett.
Jami Royal Berry, a clinical associate professor in the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy and a liaison of the visit, said the visit demonstrated the impact of the College on partnerships at the local, state, national, and international levels.
“The Egyptian principals came to learn from us, but what really happened was there was a lot of reciprocal learning, and that was from our partner districts, but it was also from us,” said Berry, who also serves as coordinator of the educational administration and policy program. “It was also from the Egyptian leaders, and everyone who came constantly highlighted that they had never seen any place where partnerships were so broad and so deep as were represented in this week of visits.”