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What if we asked our students, at final exam time, to create a multimedia project that demonstrates how their worldview has grown because of their coursework? I believe our courses should help students grow in not only knowledge, but who they are as people and how they see themselves as a member of a diverse global society. This has been the most incredible and meaningful final exam I have ever seen students produce! A few projects even brought tears to my eyes- really! For this exam I gave students a list of themes covered over the two to three years they had me as a Spanish teacher. From this list, I asked students to think about what they've learned about the world that made an impact on them (from the fun to the injustice), and to share what that knowledge is AND how it has transformed their worldview. I am sharing here one of my favorite videos! While the video is in Spanish, note that the student discussed the following topics: -access to safe, clean drinking water (this project was completed just before our own water injustice of Flint, Michigan) -trafficking in the chocolate industry -migration from Central America to the United States ALSO AN IMPORTANT NOTE! To avoid developing a "single story" of one particular place and culture, we watched the important and famous TED Talk of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, titled "Danger of a Single Story." It is important for us to not allow students to develop one idea of a people, place, or society, and to highlight both the empowering as well as injustice. ;When we teach for global competence, we don't just share knowledge about the world. We bridge divides, break down walls, and create complex connection.
This is one of my favorite class moments ever captured. I teach in a diverse district with over 20 languages spoken, a student population that is half hispanic, and a student body that teaches me about the world daily. Two of my students in this photo made the perilous journey from Central America to the United States in 2014 and 2015, and I don't have the words to describe how much they mean to me as people. They were my teacher more than I was theirs. As the immigration debate in our country intensified over the last years, it was the elephant in the room in many ways in my Spanish class. I'm not one to avoid elephants. I also knew that there was a lot I didn't know. It was a transformative year in my teaching because I was a student on this topic as much as my own students were; I just helped us all in navigating the complexity that is required to understand this important topic. We started our immigration unit by asking, "Why do people want to immigrate to the US?" We then moved to, "How do they do that, both legally and illegally?" Lastly, we reflected on the question, "What does it mean to achieve the American Dream?" I didn't have answers for any of these. I just had resources for discovering them, and deep questioning techniques to allow students to discover their own perspectives and worldview in regards to this extremely important topic. In this photo, my students from Guatemala and Honduras shared with my classes about their lives in their home countries before arriving to the US, about their journeys in getting here, and what happened after they arrived. I didn't invite them to speak to my students until we were finished with our unit so that students could use what that had learned in class to ask deep questions of these boys and all they had endured. We don't always have to leave the classroom to connect to the world. And while we may have borders that define our lands, there are no borders to our shared humanity. There are quite a few resources in this guide I've created for finding projects to connect your students to others around the world. In the photo to the left, we are having a great time in class talking with our partners in Querétaro, Mexico! Last summer as I was planning my school year themes, I decided I wanted students to explore the diverse identity of our local community, and compare and contrast that with the identity of other communities around the globe. I threw together a project idea on a web page (www.beautifulmundo.com) and posted the idea on Twitter with the hashtag #globaled and #globaledchat. It wasn't long before more than 20 schools expressed interest in the project from all over the world. Russia, India, Europe, Latin America, North America-- I was amazed! About 12 schools from all over the world joined the project and it was fun to have some Skype chats with different schools and compare our personal webpage class projects that we developed throughout the year. Every teacher was given a page for their community on the main site (www.beautifulmundo.com) with a login and password so that they could edit the page as they wished. I look forward to finding ways to collaborate globally more often in all language levels. It is amazing to be able to leverage the power of technology to foster proficiency and global competence with such meaning and relevancy. I've created a free resource guide for you to get started on global connection!
What's the next new social media phenomenon we're going to have to quickly learn how to integrate into our lessons, am I right? It's hard to keep up! I've been looking for a way to integrate Instagram meaningfully, and I'm happy to share this lesson with you. The idea here is to investigate the world in pictures, made predictions about cultural perspectives and products, and throw out our questions on Twitter with a #(country name) so that residents of the country would respond and provide us with answers to our predictions! While this assignment is mostly in Spanish as you'll see, the four steps listed to students are:
1. Look for official country pages (ex: EverydayPeru, Visit Costa Rica, Spain, etc) 2. Find photos that depict daily life and make you curious about what's happening! 3. Make predictions in the from of a question (ex: Are they having a celebration for the llama?) 4. Share your question predictions on Twitter with #(the country) and/or post your question as a comment to the photo on Instagram! It was so much fun to check Twitter every day and find out if any of our cultural wonderings were correct, and more importantly, to use language with such authenticity. How is this lesson building global competency? Global citizens are curious about the world and they investigate it. They begin to develop an understanding of different cultural practices and perspectives and communicate with empathy and care when engaging in conversations with not only each other but with those people outside of their own practices, products, and perspectives. To develop global competency in this lesson, one needs to intentionally have these conversations as the lesson develops from the investigation (Instagram) to the exploration of ideas (making cultural predictions), to communication with others. It makes for so many teachable moments, and those are just THE BEST! Since 2008, I've been bringing the world into my classroom through small lessons, side projects, community service, and international trips. Since I teach a world language, culture is a part of everyday class, and I always found kids to be curious about the world. However, there were always the themes of the book to make sure I was getting through, sometimes irrelevant vocabulary lists, and fill in the blank homework sheets to pass out. The students I've had in my first eight years of teaching have generally been all middle class. They, for the most part, enjoyed school and similar lives outside of the school day.
Now well past one decade of teaching, I am in the most diverse teaching environment of my career. About forty percent of my high school's student population is Hispanic, forty percent are white, and about twenty percent of the students come from other diverse backgrounds. We have a high free and reduced lunch rate, but are also home to students from quite wealthy backgrounds as well as the middle class. I've never had such socioeconomic diversity sitting in one classroom. It certainly has changed the classroom dynamic. My first two weeks of school in this district were full of excitement for me as I had always wanted to teach in a school with such ethnic and racial diversity. I eagerly played the Spanish music videos that had always appealed to my students in the past as this new group walked in the classroom each day. I quickly learned it bothered most everyone other than my Spanish-speaking students. After a full two weeks of playing music popular with teens in Spanish-speaking countries to no avail, I decided to ask a nice sophomore student in one of my classes what she didn't like about this fun, upbeat music. "I'm white" she responded, in a very innocent, yet matter-of-fact voice. "Wow, do I have my work cut out for me," I thought to myself. The first semester I spent slowly integrating culture into my classes. We used the grammar and vocabulary of the textbook to learn about Peru and Costa Rica from a vacationing perspective. I taught them a new dance every month from the Spanish-speaking world. Slowly, some students began to gain interest in the music, and started to ask questions that really mattered. Questions like, "Why do people in Mexico worship Mary so much, and why do they call her Guadalupe?" Or, very generally, "What is life like in Spanish-speaking countries?" I began to see a small shift in thinking.... a very small shift. The students started to wonder about people and places different front them. At the end of the first semester, I surveyed students. I wanted to know, outside of Spanish, what were they curious about in life? What did they want to know more about? In regards to Spanish, what did they want to continue to learn? And what did they want to discover about themselves? I was SHOCKED and EXCITED by the responses. Over and over and over I read, "the world," "other cultures," "what it's like to live in a different culture," "why not all Spanish-speakers look the same," "why are there different religions." What did students want to learn about themselves? "How do I fit into the world?" and "How I can overcome hardships like other people?" and "What I am good at?" I feel as though I am on to something. Although these kids hesitate to interact with each other, don't talk about their differences both in heritage and socioeconomic circumstance, and often see each other as "other," they are curious about one another. And they are curious about their world. They want to learn about life and how they will integrate themselves into it! And for this, THE TEXTBOOK JUST ISN'T GOING TO CUT IT. Students will learn about themselves, life, and what it means to be a global citizen, in Spanish. In the process, I hope to see them finally come together as the familial unit I'm accustomed to so easily creating in my classroom. I hope they appreciate one another in a new light, and leave the judgements and stereotypes at the door. I hope they come together to make their school, community, and world a better place. I hope, above all else, they feel they have grown as a person after being in my room. I confess. I am absolutely without a doubt, an idealist. Recently, I took a silly facebook quiz about what decade I should live in, and it reported back the future, because I'm a forward thinker with my head stuck in the iCloud. I laughed, and then shrugged my shoulders. In the words of Jackson Kiddard, “Instead of making up excuses for why something is impossible, it’s far better to come up with reasons why it could be possible. One reason why is more powerful than all the reasons why not.” And the possibilities are endless..... “You can’t be human all by yourself. And when you have this quality, ubuntu, you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world.” During my time in Ghana, I often thought of this quote by South African social rights activist Desmond Tutu. My time there gave new meaning to the word generosity. Before my participation in the Teachers for Global Classrooms program, I asked my students often to generously give to the world. We fundraised to help send Christmas gifts to an orphanage in Peru. We raised money to help build a water well in a rural village in Nicaragua. We raised money to help build a school in a rural area of Guatemala. As we did these things, we would spend a few days learning about these human rights issues. Some of these giving projects resulted from a previous trip I had taken in which I had participated in some volunteer projects. My trip to Ghana was a trip to the developing world in which I wasn’t giving (in money or volunteer time). It actually felt odd for me at first, as I often felt I wasn’t doing something to help the situation around me when I should be. One day in Accra for example, I went with a group of teachers to a rural school about an hour and a half outside of the capital. This was a school extremely low on resources and books, and the classroom infrastructure was very poor. I recall feeling very guilty that I was there visiting, and not doing. My visit at first felt wasted, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the staff resented our presence in a small way. As my time in Ghana continued, I began to see generosity in another way. Daily in the streets children approached me for money for various things. What I quickly learned however, was that despite whether or not they received money from me, they were genuinely interested in conversation. These moments in Ghana turned out to be my most favorite moments. I taught Spanish to children like Isaac and Princess in the streets all the time. I am still so surprised at how much it seemed that kids everywhere wanted to learn Spanish. I asked them about their lives, learned about their schools (or lack of school attendance) and about their families and homes. In my other school visits, I listened to teachers and their struggles and desires for their profession and their students. In non-profit centers such as Baobab House in Cape Coast I learned about how they were supporting street-kids and single mothers in the area. In markets I learned from some men such as Goungoo and women like Naddey as they shared with me their artisanal skills rooted in Ghanaian culture and history. In Cape Coast Castle I learned from a man who made wood carvings about this Ghanaian tradition, how he started doing wood carvings, and what he was doing to achieve his dreams to have his carvings sold worldwide. And most memorably, I will never forget the conversation and connection I made with a six year old boy as we walked hand in hand along a boardwalk returning from a visit to Nzulezo village. We chatted about our favorite colors, our favorite activities, and our families. As he let go of my hand and I stepped off the boardwalk, he said, “I’ll never forget you.” I hadn’t given him any money and I hadn’t even talked to him until we started our walk down the boardwalk. I don’t know what prompted him to say that to me, but it impacted me. Not because I feel he will never forget me (I’m sure he already has), but because in those moments, we connected as humans, not giving or taking from each other, not exchanging money, not negotiating for something in the future, but we simply gave generously with our spirits in time, presence, and connection. This is the essential meaning of generosity; a commitment to understand one another, to listen without any intention other than to recognize the spirit and humanity of another. If there were any lesson to be taken from Ghana, it is this meaning of generosity. One can’t solve the world’s problems, innovate solutions, or take action without first and foremost recognizing the humanity of others and experiencing the connectedness that comes with simply the generosity of spirit. I can't get enough of the Ghanaian handshake! Besides that is an authentic Ghanaian greeting I saw while on my trip every day, it is just plain fun! You can see a video of the handshake HERE. As I wrote in an earlier blog post, 'Contemplating Culture,' this is one of those customs that I wish we could adopt in the United States. Oh wait! I am! In my classroom!
While on the 11 hour flight from Accra to New York, I thought immensely about what I was going to do in the classroom the first day back. For hours, I drew a total blank. I just had no idea how it was going to be possible to convey to my students all that I learned, experienced, and felt while on the trip, all in one day. I asked myself, "What is the one most important thing I learned on my trip that I could share with my students, and something that might impact them?" I had decided that it was the idea, connection is everything. To understand how that idea impacted my trip so much, please head to my post "Yes, I've been to Ghana." Connection leads to understanding, empathy, acceptance, and peace, all while still allowing an individual to maintain his or her sense of self. Connection breaks down walls, stereotypes, misperceptions, misunderstandings and builds up love. I can't think of a single student (or any person for that matter!) that can't tolerate a little more love and connection in their lives. So, my only solid concrete plan on day one back in the classroom was to teach the Ghanaian handshake, and talk about why it was so important to me. And so I did. The students just love it! Now it is something I start each day with. I greet each student at the door with the Ghanaian handshake, and it has turned into an unavoidable moment of connection between myself and every student I teach every day. It's great! I want to be able to give a personal hello to each student every day. Before I begin class, the students must also handshake-it-up with three to five other students, every single day. We are working hard on being sure to handshake with people other than just friends. It's a fun way to break the ice and connect with others while also building a sense of unity. Although I was only in Ghana for two weeks, I hope to Ghanaian handshake my way through the rest of my teaching career, connecting with each student along the way. Based on my traveling experience thus far in life, including to third world and developing countries, I have always seen the ocean or sea as an exotic or luxurious place. I've traveled along, eaten, and slept near the ocean or sea in Chile, Spain, Peru, and Costa Rica. There have always been nice restaurants, hotels and homes lined along the beaches of these countries.
After driving along the coast many times in Ghana, I have an entirely new perspective of the waterfront. It is still exotic and luxurious, but not because of the prices of the homes that line it, but because the water is majestic, beautiful and powerful all by itself. The beauty of the buildings and the property no longer distract me, and instead I am able to see the exotic where it truly is….the water- in all of its wonder, mystery, depth, and power. All of the pictures above are homes and communities directly on the Atlantic ocean all along the coast Cape Coast, Ghana. |
AuthorI am a teacher, traveler, and life-long learner. I connect students and teachers to globally -focused learning. I believe students crave to understand and interact with the world. I have a Michigan home, and a global heart. Archives
August 2018
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