Conference Sessions

Over 50 hands-on workshops are organized by thematic strands.

Jump to:

Get the App Online Schedule At-a-Glance PDF


Deeper Learning

The skills and knowledge an ever-changing world demands.

Help students learn how to learn. Give them opportunities to apply critical thinking and decision-making skills to real-world issues and projects. Design learning experiences that allow them to work collaboratively and effectively with peers and experts around the world. Moreover, see how this type of education can benchmark a student’s academic growth—and meet the Common Core standards to boot—to ensure they’re on the right track to success.

 

Student-Led Conferences: Turn the Tables

Globally competent students are able to adapt and contribute to a world that is rapidly evolving. A student-led conference provides students with opportunities to communicate to their families their perspectives about their learning. We will discuss the paradigm shift of the traditional teacher-led conference to the student-owned conference. This workshop will guide educators to rethink that educational practice, provide step-by-step directions to prepare their students to sit center stage to describe and defend their work, their knowledge, and their education. Together, let’s Turn the Tables, creating a platform where students own the conversation and communicate their ideas about their world of learning.

Christine Kha
Jessica Evangelista
Komal Achhnani

College and Career: Prepare Students for a Global Marketplace

In the educational environment of today, it’s clear that American students are no longer restricted by American borders. Opportunities for educational and work experiences abroad offer rich, multicultural experiences and allow students to invest in the collective global good. The only problem? So few students actually know about these opportunities. In College and Test Preparation at Oak Hills High School, we strive not just to prepare students to take the traditional next step to higher education. We hope, rather, to give them the chance to explicitly investigate the global opportunities available to them, erasing the word “foreign” from the dialogue. Through collaborative projects, investigative research, and global communication, these students leave the class with a greater understanding of the role they can play in the world, not the limits placed on them by geographic boundaries.

Ben Hageman
Jake Richards
John Stoddard

K-5 Global Education: Tools for Building School-Wide Global Learning

Attend this workshop and have the opportunity to explore The K-5 Global Education Toolkit, a new book by Homa Tavangar (Growing Up Global) and Becky Morales (kidworldcitizen.org), with the authors. The session will help you gain practical tools to help strengthen your elementary program, whether your school is just at the beginning stages or it has a well-established global learning mission. Specific areas of take-away for this session will include integrating global learning into Common Core Standards, integrating technology tools, and real examples of meaningful service learning for K-5 students.

Homa Tavangar
Becky Morales

The Power of Experiential Learning

Learning by doing–experiential learning–dramatically impacts youth, especially when students collaborate internationally. Incorporating technology can deepen the educational experience of students even more. Qatar Foundation International (QFI) is helping students from South America, the United States, and Middle East use new technology to engage in research; participate in collaborative online platforms and projects; and travel. The impact of these experiences on youth ranges from increased global awareness and cultural literacy, to gains in educational motivation. This session features one member of QFI’s staff and two students who will demonstrate two QFI applications: Mapping the Mangroves and the Arabic Wheel. These projects exemplify QFI’s model of experiential learning by incorporating open-source, collaborative technology. By placing students in leadership roles, we give them the opportunity to become teachers to their peers and advocates for global challenges. The audience will leave the session with an appreciation of experiential learning and hands-on experience with QFI’s apps. QFI strongly believes that experience and collaboration builds stronger global citizens with greater capacity to face a dynamic world.

Charles Reaume

Mathematics in the Common Core Era

Ready, set, go! The Common Core will be here before we know it. The Common Core requires a deeper understanding of all concepts than prior state assessments called for. Luckily, the skills promoted at the ISSN, which students tend to perform well on, are very closely aligned to those needed on the Common Core. In this session, we will take a much closer look at the Mathematics Common Core, including sample questions, as well as examples of mathematics GPS tasks that have already been successfully implemented into classrooms of ISSN schools. By the end of this session, participants will also have the chance to design their own mathematics tasks that will not only prepare students to succeed on the Common Core assessment, but also to be college-ready and globally competent citizens.

Collin Felch

Create a Schoolwide Approach to Project-Based Learning

Winton Woods High School (WWHS) is a 1,100-student comprehensive high school located in Cincinnati, Ohio. We have Title-I status, and demographically have an 85 percent black enrollment, and just under 20 percent of our school population receives special education services. The Academy of Global Studies (AGS) is a school-within-a-school at WWHS, consisting of 300 students across grades 9-11. AGS is a member of the New Tech Network (NTN) and the International Studies Schools Network (ISSN). In 2013-2014, WWHS will become an all-campus ISSN school. The ISSN’s four pillars of global competence will be used as foundational building blocks for academics at WWHS (and not just AGS). This session will describe in detail the following: the wall-to-wall PBL approach used in AGS; the new endorsement pathways created at the high school (STEM/PLTW: Project Lead the Way; High School of Business; STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, & Mathematics; and AGS) ; how the pillars of global competence fit into each endorsement pathway; examples of specific projects across all disciplines; and how this undertaking was implemented. Participants will also watch a student-produced video about the school, and have the opportunity to pose their own questions.

Terri Holden
Kevin Jones

Educate for Global Citizenship with TeachUNICEF

To be successful in an increasingly interdependent world, today’s students require a level of civic and global competence that will enable them to engage effectively with people and issues both locally and internationally. This competence must be a current running throughout students’ education, so that they will learn from an early age to be curious about the world, recognize multiple perspectives, communicate constructively, solve problems creatively, and take action against injustice. TeachUNICEF offers resources for establishing a strong foundation in global citizenship, as well as for developing global competence around children’s concerns. In this session, participants will learn how UNICEF’s life-saving work establishes a unique context for building global competence. They will investigate—and be given free access to—TeachUNICEF’s array of standards-aligned teaching resources. Finally, they will explore TeachUNICEF’s new Global Citizenship units, whereby primary and secondary educators can engage their students in an exploration of rights and responsibilities from the local to the international levels. They will discover that there is room for both global and American citizenship. Through constructivist learning, including inquiry research into the meaning of global citizenship, students will become citizens of the world and express it through their own take-action plans.

Daniel Sadowskyn
Scott Hirschfeld

Preparing a Globally Competent Workforce: Resources and Strategies

The Career Readiness Partner Council recently released the report Building Blocks of Change: What it Means to be Career Ready citing: “To be career ready in our ever-changing global economy requires adaptability and a commitment to lifelong learning, along with mastery of key knowledge, skills, and dispositions that vary from one career to another and change over time as a person progresses along a developmental continuum.” The statement specifically cited adaptability, communications, and technology skills as well as real world experience as significant to career readiness. Additionally, the new Career Ready Practices by the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) includes all of these skills and calls out the ability to “work productively in teams while using cultural global competence.” This clearly resonates with the definition of a globally competent student. During this engaging and participatory session, participants will learn about the importance of global competence to create a career ready workforce. Strategies for making the case will be presented and resources for teachers interested in adding a global perspective to CTE classrooms will be shared.

Heather Singmaster
Jennifer Manise

Synthesize Multiple Perspectives: Global Texts and the Common Core

The ELA Common Core’s emphasis on the integration of knowledge and ideas generates an imperative for teaching students how to synthesize information from various sources. In this interactive session for middle and secondary social studies, geography, and ELA teachers, workshop participants explore different teaching strategies related to utilizing and synthesizing information from various global texts and perspectives. Teachers consider how to model historical reading and thinking skills, scaffold students’ exploration of multiple texts, and construct lessons around competing global perspectives that deepen students’ critical reasoning skills. The workshop concludes with a resource-share which highlights other curricular materials that support a global approach to Common Core literacy skills.

Ann Marie Gleeson

Learning English and Beyond: A Holistic Approach for Supporting English Learners

Education programs across the country are experiencing an increase in the number of young people who enroll in their programs who are English Learners. However, few programs and classrooms have the support or training to understand the unique academic and socio-emotional needs of immigrant students and English Learners. Through interactive activities, this workshop will help expand our definition of English Learner success to go beyond English acquisition, deepen your understanding of the English Learner experience, and will share research-based strategies to address both the academic and socio-emotional needs of English Learner students.

Lissette Gomez

Deeper Learning Through Global Collaboration Projects: A Simulation 

Global Collaboration Projects can be an authentic and meaningful way to engage students in deeper learning. By working collaboratively with peers around the world, students are challenged to think critically and communicate effectively while drawing on multiple perspectives to solve complex problems and addressing real-world issues. Join us to participate in a simulation of a global collaboration project designed to help you experience and understand how they contribute to deeper learning.

Honor Moorman

History, Identity & Genocide: Global Challenges in the 21st Century

As we strive to equip students of today to be leaders of tomorrow, we must help them think of new ways to respond to the issues of genocide, collective violence within national borders, and protecting citizens from their own governments. These global challenges require a deeper understanding of human behavior, of how individual and group identities shape global conflicts, and exposure to the range of moral choices. History and literature provide powerful vehicles though which to engage students in thinking critically about these issues.
In this session, participants will experience how Facing History and Ourselves’ rigorous, reflective humanities-based model addresses these difficult topics in a sustained manner through a multidisciplinary teaching approach. After learning about the failure of democracy and the steps that led to the Holocaust, students are asked “How can I make a positive difference in the world?” Our methodology begins with an examination of the self and others, first by exploring individual identity and group identities, and then examining motivations and choices that led to genocide and collective violence. Drawing upon resources from the Nuremberg Trials and the International Criminal Court, this session will model ways that a Facing History&Ourselves program can help teachers raise students’ global competence to address these important civic issues.

Sanda Balaban
David Levy

Teachers Learning Together: The Power of Lesson Study

This collaborative, interactive session will begin a discussion of the processes and purposes of lesson study, as well as considerations for implementing lesson study at a school. Participants will discuss how to implement lesson study; explore ways of using lesson study in their own practice, including aligning instructional practice to the common core standards; and learn about building professional learning communities in powerful ways. Participants will learn how lesson study can assist them in meeting the challenges of providing rich learning experiences for all students, including meeting the needs of students who learn in different ways and come from different socioeconomic environments. When teachers increase their knowledge about the content they teach as well as what works and doesn’t work instructionally, they are better equipped to design effective lessons, notice when students aren’t learning, and adjust their teaching in appropriate ways. Together they can build their knowledge base about the kinds of tasks that hold students accountable for their learning and participation and that elicit, rather than inhibit, their students’ thinking. Students benefit from their teacher’s clearer lesson objectives, more straightforward and purposeful lesson structures, and well-designed tasks that effectively get them to think, talk, and be active.

Tabatha Scharlach

Global Competency and Professional Development

World Savvy has worked for 10 years to prepare in-service teachers in grades 6-12 for the challenge of Global Citizenship, educating their students for a rapidly changing, global society, by enhancing their capacity to teach for global competency. These approaches to professional development have resulted in improved student engagement and achievement, and produced evidence that participating students demonstrate enhanced critical and creative thinking, global knowledge, coping and resiliency (‘life’ skills), research and presentation, and problem-solving capabilities. This session will explore World Savvy’s resources and approaches and focus on an exciting master’s level Global Competency certification program developed in partnership with Teachers College, Columbia University which will begin in January 2014. The key features of the program to be explored are: CONTENT necessary to build the knowledge and skill set for students looking to succeed in today’s landscape. COLLABORATIVE COMMUNITIES to utilize and further content knowledge in the classroom. EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING which invites young people and teachers to turn knowledge into action through tangible projects and curriculum, and to bring their communities, families, and classmates into this process. These three fundamental pillars will allow teachers to take back to the classroom this progressive model for the benefit of all their students.

James Zacchini
Amy Westby
William Gaudelli

Global Learning for All – The Power of the 4Cs

Supporting learning for twenty-first century readiness means ensuring global awareness and opportunities for all students, no matter where they live. Because they will go on to work, live, and be citizens in a globally interconnected world, they need a holistic education which is driven by the 4Cs of Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity. To thrive in a global workforce and society, these are the skills all students need to succeed. At P21, we have long believed the importance of integrating twenty-first century skills like global awareness alongside traditional content knowledge, and have worked with our many education and business partners to provide tools and resources to help educators at all levels make global learning a key part of the educational experience. Join Dr. Steve Paine, P21 President and former state superintendent of West Virginia, as he shares lessons from P21 members and exemplar case studies on powerful global-themed learning, and learn how to integrate global themes and other twenty-first century skills more fully within your learning community.

Steve Paine

Deeper Learning Through International Professional Development

The U.S. State Department’s Teachers for Global Classrooms and Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching programs provide fully funded professional development opportunities for U.S. teachers focused on building global competence and learning about best practices in education around the world.  Both programs offer intensive pre-departure preparation, an international experience that includes working with colleagues in local schools, and the completion of a capstone project. At this session, alumni of both programs will share their experiences, the projects they developed, and the impact their participation has had on their teaching.

Jennifer Gibson
Roxie Hentz
Aaron Shelby

Global Competence and High Performing Middle Level Education – Making the Connections

In our quest to achieve global competence for young adolescents, there are several guides along the way to institutionalize that within a proven framework for high performing middle level education. In addition, there is new research that connects success in the middle level with lessening the drop rates in high schools. Come make the connections for your schools and grade level. Do some interactive work with other people dedicated to the support of middle level, globally competent students. Take away some resources to help you maintain or grow middle level programs that are high performing, while growing global competence in young adolescents.

Judy Conk

Exploring Diversity with Respectful Curiosity

Children are naturally curious about the world around them. How can we teach them to channel their curiosity into respectful questions about cultures, religions and diversity? This session will introduce participants to practical tools for engaging students’ curiosity that are rooted in Tanenbaum’s pedagogy, The Seven Principles for Inclusive Education. After an introduction to the Seven Principles, session attendees will participate in a sample activity from Tanenbaum’s newest curriculum, Religions in My Neighborhood, which explores how we ask questions and find answers. An assessment activity will allow participants to brainstorm creative ways to encourage respectful curiosity among their students.

Marcie Denberg-Serra

 


A Digital World

Create a truly global environment, right in your own classroom.

Integrate technology and media to create a truly global learning environment. Technology provides tools to help students investigate the world, analyze information critically, weigh perspectives, and communicate ideas. It’s also an all-powerful platform for students to reach a broad audience on issues that matter the most to them.

 

BYkids Films as a Passport to the World

BYkids seeks to change the way Americans see the world by using the power of film as a tool for global understanding and a catalyst for action. BYkids provides kids around the world with the training to make short documentaries about their lives. Renowned filmmakers mentor these young people in the art of filmmaking. Through innovative distribution platforms, BYkids films enable fresh, new perspectives to be seen and shared by a global community. The workshop will help participants to: use the transformative and intimate power of documentary storytelling by youth and the reach of technology, so that American classrooms become the epicenter of a revolution for global understanding and cooperation; build a vibrant platform and community for American teachers so they can use film as a way to teach cross-cultural understanding and dialogue; work with BYkids to integrate these intimate, globally relevant stories by young people around the world into secondary school curricula across the US; allow American students, and those who teach them, come to understand the world’s problems as their own and develop online communities to continue the conversation and encourage new film projects.

Holly Carter

Design Open Badges for Education: Backpack and Beyond

In an age of anywhere, anytime learning, earners and issuers of Open Badges are helping to build an ecosystem of digital skill sharing. Now that the Open Badge Infrastructure is in version 1.0 and learners are filling their badge repositories (“Backpacks”), we’ll discuss how individual educators are reinventing recongition. Mozilla Foundation design and community lead Emily Goligoski will share examples of teacher- and learner-created badges that are driving change in this space before encouraging conferencegoers to design their own. We will ask “Why badge?” and talk about ways that badge earners and educational institutions both benefit. From there we will begin a collaborative badge system design process using real-life examples from participants’ own contexts. Together we are interested in exploring a) how badges can help learners demonstrate their interests and competencies, and b) how individuals can utilize that to access new educational opportunities. This session will be part show-and-tell; part opportunity for learning by doing; and mostly interaction around current and future meanings of badging for organizations, educators, and learners.

Emily Goligoski

Asian Studies Program: An Interdisciplinary Collaborative Teaching Model

In this workshop, panelists will share their experiences developing, implementing, and assessing an interdisciplinary introduction to Asian Studies course while collaborating with colleagues and scholars in other disciplines and countries. We will explore the wide range of meanings undergraduate students associated with experiential and exploratory learning activities; the impact of new technologies in the curriculum; the ways in which participants integrated interdisciplinary topics into their multimedia projects; and how they gained alternative points of view on Asian Studies and renewed their interest and commitment to global stories and issues.

Melda Yildiz
Xurong Kong
Tianying Yun

Environmental Education Resources for Global Classrooms

This workshop will include demonstrations and hands-on interaction with TakingITGlobal’s several environmental education platforms and tools, useful for any educator who wants to engage students with environmental issues through technology. Featured programs include Tread Lightly, Commit2Act, DeforestACTION, and Earthwatchers. The Tread Lightly teacher toolkit for climate change education covers the basics of this pressing global concern in an accessible way, applicable to a variety of subject areas. Commit2Act includes an app that allows students to commit to taking action through environmentally friendly behaviors and youth-driven campaigns. DeforestACTION focuses on action-oriented projects that involve students in learning about the crisis of deforestation and palm oil production in Borneo and beyond, using collaborative online tools. Earthwatchers, the innovative companion program to DeforestACTION, is a groundbreaking new software tool that enables young people around the planet to monitor the forests and provide usable intelligence to stop deforestation.

Kate Gatto

Build Future Friendly Schools Through the Use of Collaborative Technology

Today’s global challenges require that youth develop global awareness, environmental responsibility, and the drive and capacity to take on critical leadership roles. For schools to be future friendly, each of these areas must occupy a critical space in the classroom. Join us for a dynamic conversation about future friendly schools on the important topics of global citizenship, environmental stewardship, and student voice. Workshop participants will explore how to pioneer change and demonstrate leadership in these key areas to create future friendly schools, and leave with tangible concepts to bring to their practice. This session will be led by TakingITGlobal, an online international charitable organization which serves youth worldwide through a multilingual online learning community (at www.tigweb.org) and innovative education programs (through www.tiged.org). This session shares TIG’s web platform and technology-driven initiatives, as well as an exciting new certification program called Future Friendly Schools. Join us to learn more about how your school can get involved and engage in a global network of schools that students and educators can collaborate with and grow alongside of, toward a better common future.

Kate Gatto


Expanded Learning

Creative approaches to global competence in out-of-school time.

Adopt a global learning framework and open a world of opportunities for youth engagements. See how afterschool and summer programs, internships, service learning projects, and other out-of-school time activities can bolster academic success.

 

Debate in the Neighborhood: From the Local to the Global

Debating is an intellectually invigorating and inspiring activity that builds leadership and critical thinking skills for all students. Studies demonstrate that practicing debaters show marked improvement in a wide variety of academic skills, including better written and oral communications and reading comprehension. There are almost 250,000 high school students enrolled in New York City public high schools, yet there is minimal opportunity for students to engage in this academically rigorous endeavor. Debate training remains elusive for many, including 44,000 English Language Learners (ELLs) enrolled in NYC public high schools representing 17 percent of the NYC public high school population. ELLs are typically immigrants or first generation students that might be attracted to participating in a debate club if offered outside of school at nontraditional learning locations close to their homes. Acquiring debate skills could add to ELL’s candidacy for college and foster their interest in subjects related to democracy building preparing them for the responsibilities of future citizenship. Also compelling are the many thousands of high school students living at or below the poverty line in underserved communities in New York City that could also benefit from an enriched academic/social experience at houses of worship.

Aditi Naik

Develop Global Programs to Fit Your Mission and Budget

Global Youth Leadership Institute (GYLI)—a nonprofit created by teachers in Chicago in 2001, is one example of a co-curricular global education program. But there are many more—exchanges, language programs, and service learning projects, for example. GYLI Executive Director Matt Nink will guide educators and policymakers through ways that states, districts, and schools can start, fund, and sustain global education programs. Using summers and out of school time, all schools can offer global education programs that invite inquiry, project based learning, and teamwork. Many of these programs also involve international travel, exchange hosting, or other direct contact with populations outside of the students’ usual context. From fully funded programs offered though the US State Department, to tuition-funded and customized programs, GYLI has designed and participated in a wide variety of programs that can help states, schools, and districts achieve their global ambitions. The workshop will not only explore the various kinds of programs that already exist, but also give participants the opportunity to design their own “dream program.” Having done that, we will work on building the foundations to help realize those visions.

Matt Nink

Classrooms to Communities: Facilitate Connections to the Real World

In this session, participants will explore ways in which educators can connect with community resources and expand students’ learning opportunities beyond the classroom. One To World’s Global Classroom brings innovative, globally focused programs featuring workshops led by international, college-aged guest speakers (or “Global Guides”), in New York City public schools. Global Classroom educators will provide an interdisciplinary framework for participants to creatively connect with local resources to strengthen and enliven their curricula with new perspectives. Participants will learn where to establish connections with potential resources and how to prepare volunteers (with little to no teaching experience) for the classroom. By establishing these real world connections, educators can provide relevant learning opportunities for their students across various subjects, helping them to recognize and analyze multiple perspectives and develop cross-cultural communication skills.

Laura Tajima
Suzy Sorensen
Deepesh Dhingra

International Student Video Conferences: Bring Global Encounters to Your Class

TakingITGlobal and the Centre for Global Education presents: Global Encounters! This program brings together students from across the world through live videoconferences that explore global issues and the potential youth have to shape a better world. The purpose of this workshop is to introduce the purpose and methodology that drive this initiative, as well as the outcomes experienced among students. Examples of past videoconferences, curricula and guest speakers will be explored, including events related to the topics of HIV/AIDS, climate change, and child soldiers. To get a tangible sense of the format and content of Global Encounters videoconferences, excerpt recordings of past events will be shown. Students who participate in Global Encounters walk away with a deeper understanding for the global issue at hand, connections to peers from around the world, and an appreciation of their potential as agents of change in their local and global communities. Join us to learn more!

Kate Gatto

Global Collaboration and the Common Core State Standards

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were created to ensure students have the knowledge and skills needed for college and the high-skills workforce. In today’s flat world this means students need to be equipped with the skills of communication, collaboration, and creativity. They need to be learning with the world, not just about it. Mary Brownell of Spingside Chestnut Hill Academy and Deanne McBeath of Village Charter School will share how their students’ involvement in iEARN projects Finding Solutions to Hunger, YouthCaN, and Teddy Bear helped them make a difference in their communities and the world. This has led to students creating gardens, raising hens, coordinating school assemblies, raising funds to help a partner school in Kenya, and presenting at international conferences. Both teachers will show the connections they found among CCSS, iEARN, and their individual curriculum. Since 1988, iEARN (International Education and Resource Network) pioneered the use of the Internet and other innovative technologies to engage youth worldwide in collaborative project-based learning to address curriculum subjects and take action on global issues. All projects within iEARN are designed and facilitated by participants to fit their particular curriculum and classroom needs and schedules.

Deanne McBeath
Mary Brownell

Expanded Learning Opportunities: A Tool to Build Global Competence

Expanded learning opportunities (ELOs)—including after-school, summer, and expanded-day programs—offer a prime opportunity to build global competence in all students. ELOs prioritize hands-on, applied learning experiences to support the development of college and career readiness skills that aren’t always available within the traditional school day. For example, in a recent internal evaluation of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) out-of-school time programming in five cities, TASC found such programs significantly increased student confidence and knowledge in these fields. This interactive session will introduce participants to expanded learning models in three U.S. cities, offering participants ideas on how to structure global learning outside of the traditional school day in their own communities. Participants will see firsthand what expanded learning looks like in a series of video clips. They will hear from leaders at The After-School Corporation (NYC), the Providence After School Alliance, and Boston After School and Beyond about forging strong school-community partnerships to: redesign the school day; implement a skills-based framework; deliver hands-on, inquiry-based learning; and design credit-bearing ELOs (including the use of digital badges). Participants will divide into small groups to design expanded-learning strategies for global learning in their schools and communities, followed by a group Q&A session.

Jennifer Siaca Curry
Chris Smith
Patrick Duhon

Global Journalism: An Informational Text with Impact and Relevance

Global education can come alive with the help of beautifully told stories that shed light on societies and environments from the wandering Touareg of Mali to the wildcat gold miners of Peru to religious pilgrims aswirl in the gushing waters of the Ganges. Never about “the other,” our distinctly human-centered approach to global reporting illuminates the ways our students’ lives share the challenges and joys of those of their peers in faraway places. We’ll share our resources, show how they’ve been used successfully in a variety of in-school and out-of-school settings, and brainstorm with attendees about ways we can help meet their specific needs. We have a nimble, flexible education program that reached more than 10,000 students from St. Louis to Berlin last year, from small yet intensive short-term media workshops to year-long inquiries into meta-issues like government, media, and corporate transparency and accountability on a global scale.

Mark Schulte

 


Take Action

Students create their own future through real-world projects.

Globally competent students are change makers—they are not bystanders. They’re keenly able to recognize opportunities and problems and have the capacity to act on and defend their beliefs. A well-rounded global education not only opens student’s eyes, but also sets the stage for them to act in ways that are inspired by their course of study and driven by a desire to make a difference locally, regionally, and globally.

 

Think Globally, Problem-Solve Locally, Act Neighborly

Creating a learning environment that is global, interdisciplinary, project-based, rigorous-for-all, and connected to service and travel experiences can sometimes feel like a sideshow juggling act. In this session, we’ll walk you through our experiences of connecting service and travel expeditions meaningfully, and brainstorm ways that both of those experiences can connect to curriculum goals. Our TGPLAN Project (Think Globally, Problem-Solve Locally, Act Neighborly) at the Academy for Global Studies at Austin High will serve as a model for discussion and a springboard for generating ideas for your community. TGPLAN begins with service learning discussions in Costa Rica, and results in student commitment to tackling global issues at a local level when we return home. Working both collaboratively and independently throughout the semester, students identify issues and craft research questions, interview Austin leaders involved in advocacy, propose solutions, and take action. To develop writing skills, they create an original advocacy product (PSA, website, podcast, etc.) to persuade others to be involved. Join us to learn about our missteps and successes. In addition to sharing our story, we’ll provide participants with planning tools and the opportunity to generate ideas about connecting travel and service with specific content goals.

Stacy Allen Webster
Edward Tierney

Make a Difference in the Community: A Step-by-Step Approach

From nonprofit service organizations like Operation Fly to technological innovations like iSketch, evidence abounds supporting the notion that young minds can shape their communities when given the opportunity. This session provides a model and the necessary tools needed to realize a “take action” project for upper elementary and middle school students. Presenters will explain the planning and implementation of a project that asks, “How can I improve my city?” To answer this, students embark on excursions and participate in activities to learn their community’s history, experience its assets, and engage the public in conversations about the city’s strengths and weaknesses. Students analyze information gathered from interviews conducted with community leaders and members to identify a problem on which to take action. In this process, they consider how the problem impacts their lives and how it impacts the community. Finally, students plan and enact a solution to this problem and present their findings to city leaders. Session participants will develop an outline, identify community resources, determine experiential learning opportunities, and brainstorm learning outcomes for a take action project. Participants will see evidence of meaningful student engagement within their community and consider how they can adapt these examples to their own project.

Jennifer Carey
Callie Moreno

Intercultural Exchanges to Initiate Social Action

Global competence though social action is a key twenty-first century skill needed to succeed in our interdependent society. This session explores the link between intercultural youth exchanges, experiential learning, and changemaking projects in/out of the secondary classroom, utilizing the collaboration between AFS-USA and Ashoka’s Youth Venture, and young Americans and Argentineans as an instructive case study. Through this partnership, AFS-USA seeks to provide Ashoka’s changemakers with an intercultural experience that includes the essential components of an AFS experience – career and academic choices, language skills, intercultural sensitivity, and personal development and growth. In turn, using experiential learning methods, changemakers will have the chance to broaden their perspectives and learn from each other and from their peers in their host country, developing their intercultural communication skills and collaborative, social action projects that will benefit their local communities in the process. The impact is solid preparation to live, work and lead in a diverse global society as globally competent citizens. Student voices and projects will be presented during the workshop.

Tonya Muro
Melvin Freitas-Harmon
Rachel Centariczki

Solve the World’s Problems in the Secondary Classroom

How can we possibly engage our students with solving the world’s problems? How can we empower our students to conduct effective inquiry into issues and to take informed action in the world? This session will explore how an inquiry and action framework allows students to do just this. Through a variety of activities and sharing of student work, the session will consider how to engage students deeply with issues; how to help students conduct inquiry into these issues; and even how to empower and to motivate students to take action in the world. The presenter, a 25-year high school English teacher, has for the past six years developed and implemented a year-long extended inquiry and action curriculum with high school students. She will share materials and many examples of student work. This session will help participants think about how inquiry and action can be part of any curriculum. Participants will find out more about how to make meaningful text-to-world (and content-to-world) connections and how learning activities can help students impact the world through direct action as well as through Web-enabled global voice. The opportunities of action research will also be covered.

Dana Maloney

Create and Use Virtual Networks to Internationalize Teacher Preparation

In the past year, two significant virtual networks have formed to promote the internationalization of teacher preparation ,1) a LinkedIn group managed by NAFSA and cosponsored by Longview and Global Teacher Education and 2) the Global Teacher Education web resource to be launched in the next month. Teachers rely on teachers for collaboration, advice, and professional development. These two networks are an effort to create the same dynamic environment for teacher educators. Participants will hear how teacher educator social networks are informing policy, sharing best practice, and moving the field forward. Attendees can expect to discuss the development of the site and networks and brainstorm applications and further connections to the field.

Jennifer Manise

Connecting Haiti to Our World

Today’s current educational ideas are about designing cross curricular units while providing project based learning activities to help students become 21st Century learners. Our team started with Common Core standards and added a little technology to make a real life learning experience that our 7th graders could use to help them create opinions about water pollution and conservation by engaging in meaningful learning activities. Students gained deeper knowledge and were able to form opinions about their own part in a real world problem during our Water, Water Everywhere unit.
This unit inspired us to partner with orphanages in Haiti to make a real world difference that is transforming our students and staff. Our students surpassed our fundraising goals by raising money to help in communication and telemedicine areas at one of the orphanages. Come experience how we’ve begun to change our middle school into a school where students are truly thinking globally.

Amy Long
Shannon Kuhlman
Jared Manns

Create a “Take Action” Cell Project

The three objectives of this presentation are to familiarize and/or reinforce to participants the significance of “Taking Action;” to demonstrate to them the importance of using proven project planning tools to develop a successful four-pillars-level project; and finally, to stimulate new project ideas with basic scaffolding that the participants can take home with them and develop into real project-based learning projects at their own schools. Attendees will learn more about the Cell Project and how it was developed and will have the opportunity to acquire some tools to develop implement their own initiatives. These include “Taking Action” strategies, project planning strategies, and effectively using the “Critical Friends” technique/strategy with colleagues to help develop one’s projects.

Brad Lanier
Nancy Galster

From Globalized Standards to Taking Action

This hands-on workshop will focus on translating examples of globalized learning standards into meaningful assessment activities that promote or engage students, inspiring them to take action. The session will begin by capitalizing on the natural intersections of global competencies and existing teaching standards, including Common Core standards, through discipline discussion groups. Next, individuals will use the examples to identify an essential question, enduring knowledge, and/or skills as they relate to their classroom curriculum. Attendees will then consider assessments that provide students with an opportunity to take action individually and/or collaboratively. Additionally, student choice and student voice will be emphasized as a means to develop students’ understanding of the importance of taking action to make improvements on a local and global scale.

Susanna Halliday Miller
Kristin Laboe
Cathryn Richter

Develop Global Citizens in the Facebook Era

Leah Schrader and Zak Ringelstein are public school teachers who recently founded UClass, the new and rapidly growing twenty first century global education platform. Leveraging the features of popular social networks, UClass seeks to develop global citizenship by uniting primary and secondary school classrooms across the world around relevant issues on a Facebook-era pen pal network. In this session they will engage participants in discussions about why global education needs to be a classroom priority and how UClass offers students a fun, relevant way to connect across the world. Participants will receive an in depth tour of UClass as well as develop both a pedagogical understanding of global education and practical action steps for implementing it in their educational settings.

Leah Schrader

World Water Week: Schoolwide Global Learning and Action

Learn how to create a global festival in your school. Noah Zeichner will explain how he and his students coordinated World Water Week, a school-wide event, for the past three years at Chief Sealth International High School in Seattle, Washington. The festival includes a public keynote event, a synchronous all-school lesson, assemblies, an evening family event, and a daylong student conference that features 25-30 different workshop sessions. A school-wide “ideas festival” can transform a school community. Student leaders enhance critical global competencies, students and staff become more globally aware, and students take collective action toward addressing complex global problems. Participants will experience part of a school-wide lesson that took place during World Water Week. After watching a short video, they will estimate their daily domestic water usage and compare with average totals from a variety of countries. Participants will also learn how students organized a school-wide conference and service project about water and will experience one of the workshop sessions that took place during the festival. Lastly, participants will be led through a brainstorming process and the beginning steps of planning festivals in their own schools. Organizational tools will be shared.

Noah Zeichner

Knowledge to Action: Global Ed and Youth Leadership Outside the Classroom

World Savvy’s mission is to educate and engage youth in community and global issues. We have found that the most effective way to broadly achieve this mission is to empower educators with the skills, knowledge, and capacity to tackle complex and challenging global issues in their classrooms. Using our youth programs as a model for school educators and administrators, participants will examine best practices for training and supporting teachers of all disciplines in making global issues accessible and locally relevant to their students.

Amy Westby

“One Hen Project” Hatching Young Change-Makers

Experiential learning and service are fostered through the book One Hen by Katie Smith Milway, as students acquire and manage their own microloans. Teachers will learn a model for incorporating service learning into their curriculum. They will be able to see how service learning isn’t just one more thing, but a powerful tool in accomplishing academic standards and benchmarks. One person can make a difference; when people work cooperatively an even greater impact is achieved. Given real-world application, even the youngest students can master complicated subjects. Concordia International School Shanghai’s “One Hen” economics unit will be highlighted with evidence of lessons learned and lives changed.

Debbie Burns
Karin Semler

Making Connections: Academics + Service Learning = Local & Global Engagement

While teaching core content remains essential, how content and skills are taught makes a world of difference. Discover how service learning, when done well, becomes the engine that moves the curriculum forward with a high level of inquiry and action research, improved 21st century skills, and exemplary student engagement. In every school, the true value of learning can be realized by the authentic outcomes of what students actualize in their community and what they grow to understand about their interconnectedness in the world. Together, explore practical and useful processes that elevate learning and promote service. Bring excitement into every grade level and into every subject! Move from relevance to real! This experiential session offers a wealth of ideas, practical tips, and easy-to-use classroom strategies and resources.

Cathryn Berger Kaye