THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 1, 1996 TAG: 9604300142
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JO-ANN CLEGG, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
The last time they counted heads, Bayside Middle School had a population of 1,000 students - give or take a few transfers - in three grades.
Terra Ceia Christian School, a hop, skip and reasonably long jump from Washington, N.C., has 130 students in grades kindergarten through 12th and fewer transfers in a year than your average Virginia Beach school has in a day.
So what's the connection? A college friendship between two young women that has now been extended to the students they teach.
Heather Salter and Karen Glass both graduated from East Carolina University last year. Salter came to the big city to teach reading at Bayside Middle. Glass went home to Beaufort County to teach the 22 fifth- and sixth-graders in the school from which she had graduated just a few years before.
When Salter began looking for pen pals for some of her Bayside students, she hit on the idea of having them correspond with Glass' class down near where the Pungo River meets the Pamlico Sound.
For most of this school year, the urban kids who know a lot more about malls and McDonald's than they do about cows and crops wrote to the farm kids.
The farm kids, who know more about getting milk from a cow than they do about getting on an escalator, wrote back.
Information was exchanged, long-distance friendships were formed and eventually an invitation was extended. The Terra Ceia students invited the Bayside students to come down for the weekend.
``It took a lot of planning and a lot of work,'' said Linda Midgette, the Bayside administrative assistant who works with Salter, ``but they managed to do it.''
First there were the trip requirements to be met. Since there wasn't room for everyone in Salter's classes to go, a list of requirements was set up. To qualify for the trip the student had to be a pen pal, have no D's or E's and no in-school or out-of-school suspensions. In addition, those chosen had to be able to represent the school with dignity, honor and respect, get permission from parents and good citizenship recommendations from teachers and submit a 200 word essay on why they should be selected.
And, they had to raise the money.
In the end, 25 students qualified for the mid-April trip.
For the youngsters, few of whom had ever been near a farm, it was the trip of a lifetime. ``We took a van out to look for deer and bears at night,'' a wide-eyed William Fisher said. They saw lots of deer, but no bear.
The students spent the day at the annual festival that celebrates the small community's Dutch heritage. The night they spent as guests of Bill and Diane Van Staalduinen on their family farm. The accommodations were an eye opener for the city kids. ``It was my first time on a farm,'' Sheneen Washington said. ``We slept in the barn, on the floor in sleeping bags. As soon as everyone got quiet, then the cows started mooing. We didn't get a lot of sleep,'' the seventh-grader added, ``but we had a lot of fun.''
To make things even more interesting, there were two doors leading from the sleeping area. One went to the shower. The other went to the hog barn. ``When I opened the door I smelled all the pigs and I said `I don't think this is the shower,' '' said Suzanne Duve, 12.
For many, the highlight of the trip was the opportunity to feed the baby calves. Each had the chance, each had a slightly different experience. But what all of them learned was that small cows are a greedy lot that, if they can't find the bottle, will happily suck on your finger or your hand.
The youngsters also learned something important about their rural hosts. ``We found out how honest the people are,'' Sean Salch said. ``They don't even have locks on their lockers. They leave everything out and if someone finds money on the floor they take it to the principal's office so the person it belongs to can get it back.''
According to Glass, there was learning on both sides. ``It was such a cultural experience. Our students were so impressed (by the Bayside youngsters) that now they want to go to Virginia Beach,'' she said.
Among the students making the trip were two comparative newcomers to this country. Roberto Dimauro came from Italy a year ago. Jaime Rull, a native of the Philippines, has lived in this country for two years.
Back in school, the youngsters had one more task to perform. After school one day last week, most of the 25 sat in the classroom thoughtfully composing thank-you notes to their hosts and to local businesses and individuals who had helped make the trip possible.
They were doing it just as they did the chores around the farm where they stayed: the old-fashioned way. No computers, no fax machines and no spell checks. Just heartfelt thanks written carefully and sincerely in pen on a piece of yellow paper. ILLUSTRATION: Jennifer Cooper, a seventh-grader at Bayside Middle School, had
the opportunity to feed one of the baby calves on the farm in North
Carolina.
Photo by JO-ANN CLEGG
Jaime Rull writes a thank-you note to a donor who helped make the
trip to Terra Ceia, N.C., possible.
by CNB