South Korean School District Partners With Howard County Schools

HOWARD COUNTY, MD — School leaders have teamed up with the Gyeonggido Gimpo District Office of Education in South Korea as a new partner.

Howard County Public School System leaders and Korean education staff plan to share professional learning and cultural experiences, as well as instructional resources. The two districts will establish and maintain relationships between several HCPSS and Gimpo “sister schools,” with the goal of facilitating the exchange of educational and cultural experiences and helping to strengthen mutual understanding and appreciation of each school’s cultures, communities and traditions, school leaders said.

HCPSS’ Chief Schools Officer Jennifer Robinson and Multilingual Family Services Supervisor Min Woo traveled to Gimpo in December to formalize the partnership.

“It was an absolutely beautiful trip,” Robinson said. “In addition to meeting with the superintendent of Gyeonggido Province and the Gimpo District superintendent, we had the opportunity to visit several Gimpo schools. It was amazing to see their classrooms, interact with their teachers and students, and compare and contrast with our experience at HCPSS.”

“Just as an example, there are no custodians at the schools we visited. Students take off their shoes when they arrive at school and they all have brushes and dust bins at their desks to keep their space clean,” Woo added. “Students also serve their teachers lunch before they themselves eat and are responsible for cleaning up their area.”

Robinson and Woo also observed several similarities between Gimpo and HCPSS schools, the school district shared.

“As is the case in our schools, they use a standardized curriculum and teach a lot of the same subjects we do. And, like us, they have many very talented educators,” Robinson said. “Also, kids are kids. No matter where they are from, they love to play, laugh and discover new things.”

While they were in Gimpo, Robinson and Woo also had the opportunity to represent HCPSS and the United States at a two-day international educational symposium, organized by the South Korean government’s division of international education. Titled “Unlearn to Learn,” the symposium brought together representatives from educational institutions around the world to discuss the current state of education, as well as its future.

“There was definitely a big focus on artificial intelligence,” Robinson said. “We talked about how we are all in this together, trying to figure out what AI means for education in our own countries and as members of a global community.”

HCPSS initially established a relationship with South Korea in the early 2000s, when South Korean Assemblywoman Cho Bae Sook contacted the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., and asked the education consulate to arrange a meeting with HCPSS. Howard County school leaders then visited Korea and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iksan District of Education.

In the years that followed, groups of Korean students traveled to Howard County as part of a summer cultural exchange program, where they stayed with Korean families living in Howard County and took classes designed to immerse them in the English language and expose them to American schools and culture. Korean gifted and talented science teachers also came to visit HCPSS schools and meet with staff. HCPSS renewed its partnership with Iksan in 2017, and Korean students visited every summer until 2023, with the exception of two years during the coronavirus pandemic, HCPSS leaders stated.