John P. McDonough, Secretary of State    

Leningrad Region/City of St. Petersburg, Russia
A delegation of English language teachers spent 1 week in Annapolis and Baltimore learning from their Maryland counterparts.
click for full picture • Delegate Zhanna Okuneva prepares a worksheet that the group used in a Russian language class that they team-taught at Severn Middle School.

 
• State Superintendent of Schools Dr. Nancy S. Grasmick met delegates at the Maryland State Department of Education. Maryland State Superintendent

• Our Russian friends learned about existing Sister School relationships in Japan from members of the Maryland – Kanagawa, Japan Sister State’s Subcommittee on Education. Posing from left to right are, in the front row, Zhanna Okuneva, Olga Boluchevskaya, Noriko Tojo (St. Paul’s School for Girls, Brooklandville, MD), and Svetlana Tyushkina , and in the back row Tanya Sher (interpreter), Sventlana Loskutova, Beth Volk (Office of the Secretary of State), Natalya Kozichuk, Mendy Nitsch (Office of the Secretary of State), Svetlana Labadina, and Kathleen Koehnlein (Altholton High School, Laurel, MD).

• During a visit to Annapolis, the delegates found out about the legislative process and important issues in education in Maryland. Posing from left to right are Olga Boluchevskaya, Svetlana Tyushkina , Delegate Anne Kasier, Sventlana Loskutova, Svetlana Labadina, Delagate Murray Levy, Zhanna Okuneva, John Woolums (Maryland Association of Boards of Education), Natalya Kozichuk, and Ardath Cade, Chair of the Maryland-Leningrad Region Sister State Committee.