by Olivia Blanco Mullins

Five Somerville residents who are teachers in the Boston Public Schools system have been awarded travel and study grants for this summer by the Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE) and the Fund For Teachers/Boston Initiative.

“Learning about other people and other cultures is a continuos process,” said Blake M. Barich, a Somerville resident and teacher at Excel High School at the South Boston Educational Complex. Barich will travel to China, a country she focuses on in her history classes, with another teacher. “We want to come back to our students and teach them what this kind of government does to a country. We want to learn about the differences between them and us.”

To be considered for the grant, teachers had to submit detailed proposals of their travel projects, said Kate A. Malikowski, project assistant for BPE.

Viviana B. De Mello of Somerville, who teaches math and physics at the Jeremiah Burke High School in Dorchester, said that writing her winning proposal wasn’t hard.

“I really believe in this project,” she said. “When it was time to write the proposal, all the ideas were very well-structured; I had needed them so much.”

De Mello, along with a literacy coach, will travel to her native Cape Verde and meet with school officials there, including other teachers, and the mayor of the island Fogo. Much of the Boston Cape Verde community, De Mello said, comes from Fogo.

Parents in Cape Verde who plan to move to the United States often take their kids out of school thinking that an education in another language won’t be useful once they are in America, De Mello said.

“Every year we have newcomers. If we can improve their background before they come here, they’ll have some foundation and they will perform better,” she said. “The grant will allow us to start bridges with our school, the schools in Cape Verde and their department of education.”

De Mello said her students are very excited about her project. “We have done interviews on tape, and we are going to show it in Cape Verde. It gives advice to what students should do.” Her class has also raised money to buy books for students in Cape Verde.

Other teachers from Somerville who were awarded travel grants include Beth Dietz, of Madison Park School in Roxbury, who will travel to South Africa to learn about HIV and AIDS education and prevention; Judith Randolph, of Emerson Elementary School in Roxbury, will research and design a new section for her class called “Organisms and their environment” in Costa Rica; and Liana Tuller, of Charleston High School, will study the language and culture of the Dominican Republic, where many of her students are from.

More than 300 Boston Public Schools teachers applied for the grants, and 94 were awarded, said Ellen Guiney, executive director of the BPE. A total of $249,733 was awarded, and each project was given grants ranging from $1,200 to $7,500. Twenty-two teachers won grants for individual projects, while seventy-two were awarded for teacher team designed projects. In total, the 94 teachers will visit 24 countries and at least 17 states this summer.

“We all expect teachers to use their own experiences to enrich their work with students,” said Guiney. “There is no better way than travel to learn and grow and deepen one’s knowledge.”

Raymond Plank, founder of Funds for Teachers (FFT), a national organization with programs in Denver, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Tulsa, New York and Houston, approached the BPE about starting a Boston branch of the organization last winter, said Malikowski, of the BPE. These are the first grants the BPE has awarded.

“Funds for Teachers is wonderful because it recognizes teachers for their innovative ideas about how to improve teaching and learning,” said Boston school superintendent Thomas W. Payzant. “These generous grants provide resources for teachers to explore an interest in which they normally could not pursue, and use it to bring exciting new learning opportunities to the students in the classroom.”

Barich and De Mello said they also plan to start pen-pal projects to keep their students in touch with students from China and Cape Verde.

“Once they get connected to Chinese students it will make [learning] more personal,” said Barich. “Many students are not from this country, and they are very interested in learning about other countries.

“And this shows them that we are still learning,” Barich said of her students. “And that it is possible to apply for these things.”