ABOUT US
Collaboration
International Culture Center
Here is an opportunity for participants to increase their awareness, understanding of and respect for the world's diverse cultures. Teachers and mentors from a variety of backgrounds share their cultural experiences with the students.
We provide opportunities for meaningful cultural exchange and enrichment. The International Culture Center is a joint project of The Enrichment Centers and The Prejudice Institute, dedicated to promoting multicultural harmony and awareness through community-based educational enrichment programs.
Participants ”travel" around the world through
• books and multimedia presentations
• meeting people from other lands
• student-exchange opportunities
• learning about other languages
• museum trips
• planning cultural extravaganzas and exhibits
The main focus of our Maryland-based program is to provide real-life opportunities for meaningful cultural exchange and enrichment for children in Maryland.
Some of the activities include:
• field trips
• sampling foods from different countries
• sharing culture, history, and customs with staff members and students from all over the world who have come to share their culture, history and customs
Language Immersion Programs
These programs provide students ages 3 to 18 with total language immersion, and are taught by native speakers of Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, German and English as a second language. Instruction in other languages may also be available. Because we know that children at an early age pick up languages almost effortlessly, our language immersion program begins at age three.
Where tennis courts are available, we offer tennis lessons, which may not necessarily be language-immersed.
Our staff has representatives from European, Asian, South American and African ethnic and national cultures.
Home Stay Programs
These programs give families an opportunity for extended cultural interaction through hosting a foreign student or a college intern from abroad or another region in the U.S.
Programs are available year-round.
The Prejudice Institute
The Enrichment Centers and The Prejudice Institute work together to promote multicultural harmony and awareness. Teachers and mentors from a variety of backgrounds share their cultural experiences with the students, providing a learning environment of meaningful exchange and enrichment.
Notable Collaborators
Dr. Howard J. Ehrlich directs The Prejudice Institute, Inc. An internationally known sociologist, Dr. Ehrlich heads teacher training and provides multicultural education as well as prejudice- and conflict-reduction programs. The Institute is a primary consultant to The Enrichment Centers, Inc. in designing the multicultural programs and in evaluating the procedures for all curricular materials.
EduCAN (Educational Creative Arts Networking) provides training for The Enrichment Centers, Inc. staff and facilitates a program for use with the United Planning Organization in serving adolescents of inner city Washington, D.C.
Lynn Ditchfield has been an educator for 35 years with experience in a variety of settings: from urban to rural schools, pre-school to university. She was recently awarded the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award in 2006, and has appeared in three edition of Who's Who Among America's Teaches from 2003 to 2006. She has shown how the arts can be used as an effective strategy to engage at-risk students in learning through research, publications, and a filmed case study entitled Linking Voices: Breaking Silence. Lynn applies the most effective practices to her collaborative work with Enrichment Centers students.