Silver International featured in German magazine

The staff of Blair's Silver International was featured in the August issue of Info Atlas, a German magazine, in an article that discussed the relationship between German students and the Silver International staff.

Following the Sept. 11 attacks, a high-school English class near Berlin decided to write letters to students in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, according to Joseph Bellino, who is the head of the ESOL department. The letters conveyed the students' sympathy for the lives lost in the attacks.

The English teacher in Germany conducted an Internet search of schools in this area, and the class of Gymnasium Wandlitz, the German high school, chose Blair as the school to whom they wished to send their letters. The letters were printed in Silver International in Fall 2001.

Silver International staff contacted the German students via e-mail, and Bellino created a web page where the Silver International staff and German students could hold discussions on topics such as terrorism and the war in Iraq. Bellino said the Info Atlas article gave the Silver International staff an exciting opportunity. "It's interesting to have a school newspaper publicized like this in Germany," he said.

The article also discussed a Gymnasium Wandlitz student who moved to America in the summer of 2003 with family and visited the Silver International staff.