RUSSIA VISIT: Teachers get royal treatment in exchange

On a recent trip to Russia, Ms. Cardillo had made so many friends that she lost track of all the gifts they slipped into her luggage for her trip home -- including a whole salami, which she wasn't allowed to bring into the U.S.

She was one of a dozen people from the Albany Diocese, many of them educators from Catholic schools, who spent their spring break exchanging ideas on teaching techniques with peers in Kursk, Russia. She is director of educational technology for the diocesan Catholic Schools Office.

It was the fifth such trip led by Jack McGurgan, a fourth-grade teacher and retired school principal from Rensselaer (see accompanying story).

Russian around

Ms. Cardillo added her name to the trip roster because she was interested in Russia, having been a foreign-language teacher in the past.

"I wanted to go to a culture that was totally different," she remarked. "When you go as a tourist, you go to all the [tourist] sites and there are a lot of Americans around."

Exchanging ideas

"For the most part, they wanted to show their school and their students," Ms. Cardillo said. "They were interested in our feedback on the way they taught and wanted to see us teach."

In doing so, the Americans also learned a lot about education in Russia, good and bad. Ms. Cardillo said the schools she visited looked like homes, with wallpapered classrooms and lace curtains -- but there were few educational materials. In fact, she said, the students' English textbook was so old that the lesson one day was on the 1932 Olympics in Australia!

Impressions

"We [in American schools] tend to be very departmentalized," she remarked.

The Americans brought artwork by children from six Catholic schools in the Albany Diocese, and the Russians made an exhibit of the drawings and even showed them on the local television news. The group was also interviewed for the news, and TV cameras followed them wherever they went.

Culture

Others from the group didn't fare so well. Ms. Cardillo noted that the group had been forewarned that their host families would probably be very poor, so each American brought an extra suitcase of coffee, tea, nuts and other perishables. Ms. Cardillo's host e-mailed her after the trip, saying, "I ate your peanut butter. It was wonderful!"

"She took care of me like I would break," the director recalled. "They felt honored to take care of us. One day, I washed my own dishes, and she made me promise not to tell anybody!"

The host's family visited Ms. Cardillo often -- even when she was without a translator and could only thank them mutely for the food they insisted on bringing her. Even outside the house, Ms. Cardillo told The Evangelist, she couldn't glance at a food item without her host buying it for her, saying, "It would make me happy if you had it."

Countryside

"That doesn't sound like fun," she said.

"But you have the fresh air, and you're outside the city," her hosts responded.

9-11 reaction

"Everybody was so touched about Sept. 11," she said. "They said, `We pray for your people every night.' They were always toasting to `peace between our nations,' `health and happiness for your family.'"

When she left her host, Ms. Cardillo said the woman's entire family came to the train station to see her off and even ran alongside the train, waving goodbye. She hopes to see the student she got to know when the girl visits the U.S. to work this summer.

The director said she'd like to re-visit Russia, too. Throughout the trip, she said, "I felt so protected. I was always surrounded by people."

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