It’s a weekday in March, seemingly just the same as any other school day. But today Upper School French teacher and Languages and Cultural Studies Department Chair Lorin Pritikin’s French III class is sitting in her classroom, their faces illuminated by the screen of Pritikin’s desktop Mac, on which there are two smiling female faces from a school in Casablanca, Morocco.

Pritikin’s nine French III students took turns asking those on the other side of the screen questions in French. Although their replies were marred by technological issues, the conversation built, each side of the screen tentatively engaging with the other in a non-native language.

Throughout the school year, French III students have engaged with the Moroccan students, enrolled at Yassamine Sidi Maarouf School, part of Morocco’s Ecoles Yassamine network, via Google Hangout, discussing music, extracurriculars, and social activities during their limited mutual class time. This is the thirteenth year that French III students have communicated directly with other French-speaking students in Morocco, and the first that Pritikin’s class has worked with students attending Yassamine Sidi Maarouf.

“About 13 years ago, I was approached by Dan Frank who received a phone call from somebody who said another school in Chicago was working on this project called Global Voices, and they had to drop out,” Pritikin said. “And Dan Frank came and found me and said, ‘I don’t really understand the program, but it might be something you’d be interested in.’ So he gave me a phone number, and I called, and that’s how we got started in this program.”

The Global Voices Initiative, founded by Arlene Crewdson in 2004, spans 10 countries across five continents. According to Pritikin, two classes in different countries participating in Global Voices are paired up and spend the year periodically video-chatting. During video-chat sessions, students have the opportunity to ask each other questions about life as a teenager in the other country.

“The whole motivation behind it is people-to-people diplomacy,” Pritikin said. “The idea is to get young people talking to other young people and let the adults get out of the way so that they can exchange ideas, and to use the arts to be the icebreaker in terms of having a lens into the culture of a particular country that participates in Global Voices.”

For their culminating activity, Pritikin’s students wrote a play in French for the Moroccan students, a process which began last month and concluded on Friday, when they traveled to Schurz High School on Chicago’s West Side and performed their play over live video for the students at Yassamine Sidi Maarouf. “My students come up with themes that they want to write on,” Pritikin said. “And we’ve had a diverse number of themes, from college pressure to drug abuse to mental health to gun violence. We try to stay away from political themes. There’s no censorship, but our themes have been less political and more social welfare issues.”

The Moroccan students also wrote a play in English and performed it for Pritikin’s students. “We’re writing our play on being gay in a homophobic country,” junior Caroline Viravec said. “Two guys start talking online –– one is from Chechnya and the other is from France –– and the one from Chechnya decides to visit the one in France, which is the more liberal country. But even in France they experience homophobia because there’s a hate crime against them while they’re there.”

According to Viravec, to choose their theme, the French III class used the current political climate in the United States to brainstorm various ideas and then picked their favorite.

All did not go as planned this year with the play exchange, sophomore Celia Rattner said. Due to a scheduling conflict, the play written by Pritikin’s students was given to a state-run public high school, which censored the play, meaning it will not be performed May 11.

Pritikin’s students are not the only ones communicating with students in other countries. For the second consecutive year, Upper School Spanish teacher Mark Hernández’s Spanish IV students have been using TalkAbroad, an online video-chat service through which students choose conversation partners in one of eight target languages –– Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Arabic, or Japanese –– to practice their verbal skills.

“I learned about TalkAbroad when I was at a conference two years ago at Michigan State University,” Hernández said. “The topic was computer-assisted language learning –– how to incorporate more authentic materials into the classroom. So I went to a presentation by Todd Nichols, the founder of TalkAbroad, and the basic premise of TalkAbroad is to pair language students –– in our case, it’s Spanish –– with native speakers of that language.”

Beginning in February, Hernández’s students participated in a series of four thirty-minute conversations with trained and vetted language partners who work for TalkAbroad. Many of these partners are college-age students looking for ways to earn income to pay for their studies, with the occasional abuelita, or grandmother, Hernández said. Students are given a list of potential partners and information about them –– their background, interests, profession –– and select their partner based on whom they’d most like to talk to.

“For each conversation, I give suggested topics just for them to get used to the process –– who you are, describe yourself, describe your family life, your hobbies,” Hernández said, “and they go from there.” Students scheduled their TalkAbroad sessions for after the school day. The audio was then recorded and sent to Hernández, who listened to the conversations.

“What I’ve told the students, especially because for many of them it’s their first time having an extended conversation with a native speaker, is that I don’t expect perfection,” Hernández said. “You’re learning, finding your way, and I want to see a serious engagement with the partner –– that’s more important than a perfect exchange.”