Cultural diversity, classroom management and curriculum are some of the topics three exchange students from Australia and Sweden are learning about in Fayetteville elementary school classes while adding experience to their resumes they believe will be beneficial.

Kristin Andersson and Beatrice Karlsson came to Fayetteville from Sweden four weeks ago for a teaching internship arranged by the University of Arkansas. They leave this Saturday to spend a few days in New York City before returning home. Rebecca O'Neill arrived last week from Australia for her five-week teaching placement.

Leverett Elementary School in Fayetteville paired the education students with teachers in several classrooms. Their visits are coordinated by the Office of Study Abroad & International Exchange and the College of Education and Health Professions.

Tom Smith, dean of the College of Education and Health Professions, said expanding opportunities for international exchange of teacher-education students is a win-win situation.

"We are fortunate to have local partners such as Leverett Elementary," Smith said. "They provide an ideal learning environment for our students doing internships and now are opening their classrooms to these visiting students."

The exchange students also talked about the Leverett staff.

"My teacher has been extremely helpful and provided me with loads of support and resources I may need to plan future lessons," O'Neill said.

Leverett Elementary sits across the street from the north edge of the U of A campus and has a long history of partnerships and collaboration with the university. The elementary school has a diverse student body and staff and is designated a School of Innovation by the Arkansas Department of Education, two factors that principal Cheryl Putnam said make the chance to host international university students especially appropriate.

"Being a School of Innovation means one of our goals is to build critical thinking skills among our students, and we want to try new things," Putnam said. "Having the international students doing internships here brings that to another level, to an international level. It's really exciting for the students and teachers to have someone who can tell us how things are done in other countries. They give us fresh ideas and bring in a wealth of knowledge that is first hand. We talk about having primary sources; what better way than to actually know someone who can talk about their own experiences?"

The U of A is celebrating International Education Week through Nov. 20. The three prospective teachers from overseas said they expect study abroad to benefit them in several ways.

"I think it is really good to have on our CV (curriculum vitae) that we have experience at a U.S. school," Karlsson said. "That extra experience may be why (employers) choose us when comparing us with other students."

The three students also said they want to become teachers because they enjoy helping children learn and want them to have good experiences in school. Karlsson said she would like to teach in a Swedish school abroad after she earns her degree, and Andersson said the visit to Arkansas has also made her consider teaching out of her home country after graduation.

"There are so many reasons I want to be a teacher," O'Neill said. "I like to see children learn and understand the world around them."

The Leverett student body is more diverse than the classrooms in Sweden and Australia with which they are familiar, Andersson, Karlsson and O'Neill said, and the curriculum in their countries is based on a nationwide model.

The students presented a lesson about their home countries for the children in their classrooms. The Swedish students taught their pupils some simple words and phrases in Swedish such as "hello" and "how are you," and O'Neill shared vegemite spread on crackers with the children in her classroom. Vegemite is a dark brown Australian food paste made from brewers' yeast extract and various vegetable and spice additives.

"We told them IKEA is a Swedish company and some of them had visited an IKEA store," Karlsson said. "They didn't know it was from Sweden and we showed them a picture of a Volvo, which are made in Sweden."

"They also wanted to know if we came from across the ocean," Andersson said. "Several confused Sweden with Switzerland so we talked about that. Some asked us what language we speak, and we explained about Swedish."

In Sweden, children begin to learn English in the second grade, the students said.

O'Neill taught the lesson about her country as a way to get to know her students and for them to get to know her. She used a cross-curriculum activity that included key learning areas such as mathematics, geography and English. The lesson introduced children to some animals native to Australia and places with reference to a map of the world.

"We also compared currency and talked about the exchange rate, which provided students with cultural awareness," O'Neill said. "Through our class discussion, I learned a few things about America such as it's important I try a s'more before I leave and that the people of Fayetteville are huge college sports fans. The Grade 4 students and I went to a basketball game last Friday, and they taught me a few things about the game and the chant (the Hog Call) when the players come onto the court."

She said computer technology is available in both U.S. and Australian classrooms, although she was used to all classrooms in Australia being equipped with smart boards. Her priority, though, is that lessons be interactive, even with technology, so that children learn to work well with each other and with their teachers.

The teacher she is paired with at Leverett has been helping her understand how to work with children who speak English as a second language, O'Neill said.

"You have to plan lessons around them, not focus on their weaknesses," she said.

Andersson and Karlsson's classmates are doing teaching internships in Thailand and Germany as well as another site in the United States. They said the established relationship the U of A has with their university, Jönköping University, was one thing that made them choose Fayetteville. They are staying with U of A students in an apartment complex, an arrangement also taken care of by the U of A.

Less access to public transportation was an adjustment, the Swedish students said, especially one Sunday when they wanted to go to Walmart. Later in their visit, they rented a car to take a weekend trip to Dallas and said the traffic was faster and the highways had more lanes than in Sweden. Most college students in Sweden don't have vehicles, they said.

Growing up using the metric system caused Andersson and Karlsson a bit of confusion while in the United States. Andersson was at the apartment complex fitness center and thought she was setting the speed on a treadmill at 9 kilometers an hour but it was actually 9 miles an hour, a much faster clip. Karlsson said she was used to cooking food at about 200 degrees Celsius so she was surprised at the much higher temperature Fahrenheit settings on the apartment's oven.

Since O'Neill will be in Arkansas over the Thanksgiving holiday, her U of A roommates invited her to spend the holiday with them in Little Rock.

"Everyone has been really nice," she said. "My roommates were welcoming and showed me around Fayetteville and introduced me to the life of a university student in Arkansas."

Jake Ayo, director of field placement for the College of Education and Health Professions, said the college plans to build on the study abroad program for students studying to be teachers.

"We had one student here from Australia last year, and the three this year are doing well," Ayo said. "Our U of A students have gone to Sweden and Peru, and we will add Belize as a location for the spring, as well. We expect this program to continue to grow."

O'Neill summed up the ideal attitude for study abroad.

"I'm all for saying yes to any opportunity that comes along," she said.