GSE Team Heads to Haiti

In July, a Penn GSE team will travel to Haiti to launch a long-term educational development project.

The first phase of a longer-term redevelopment project in post-disaster Haiti, this trip will concentrate on building partnerships with the Haitian Ministry of Education and not-for-profit relief agencies working to rebuild the country. The team will also be conducting a community needs assessment, particularly focused on education.

Later visits will include collaborating on professional development programs for educational leaders and teachers, conducting a program evaluation, and planning for in-country capacity building and sustainability.

According to team leader Sharon Ravitch, a Penn GSE faculty member who specializes in international applied development research, “Our goal is to create partnerships that lead to in-country capacity building and sustainability, and our guiding principles include customizing our work to the cultural context as well as collaborating with the local community”

The balance of the team is composed of three current or former Penn GSE students. Two of the team members, Ralph Bouquet and Wagner Marseille, are Haitian-born. Bouquet, a current student in Penn GSE’s TFA urban teacher master’s program, is currently teaching biology and chemistry at Frankford High School in Northeast Philadelphia. Marseille, a graduate of Penn GSE’s Mid-Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership, is an assistant principal in the Lower Merion (PA) school district.

The third team member, Laura Colket, is a doctoral candidate in Penn GSE’s Educational Leadership program. Previously, Colket ran the Philadelphia office of Jumpstart, a national early childhood literacy organization that focuses on the importance of mentoring and building school-community partnerships.