LEARN AND READ ABOUT GLOBAL EDUCATION
Scroll down for access to a number of journals, articles, and videos that explain the importance and fundamentals of Global Education and Global Citizenship as well as clear strategies for how to adapt your lesson planning and classroom thinking around Global Education. I will also provide some helpful tips about approaching this literature, taking it step-by-step to avoid getting overwhelmed.
BEGINNING YOUR JOURNEY INTO GLOBAL EDUCATION
I would go through these materials slowly. A common misconception is that you need to transform your entire classroom overnight. I think that a chapter or two, an article, and a video each week is enough, especially if you leave yourself enough time to actually consider and reflect on tangible ways you can begin to center your classroom around global thinking. If you feel ready for more, go for it! If it's too much, then read a bit less each week, but try to make it a part of an on-going weekly practice. I will provide examples of this work integrated into my own teaching in the Teaching section of this website.
ASIA SOCIETY: EDUCATING FOR GLOBAL COMPETENCE: PREPARING OUR YOUTH TO ENGAGE THE WORLD
This is a fairly long instructional guide that both defines global education and demonstrates how to implement it into your classroom. While it can seem like a lot, I would recommend 1-2 chapters per week, taking the time to answer the questions at the end of each chapter. Consider working through this book with a group of fellow educators. Are you an administrator? Consider going through the guide as part of continuing PD. There are examples of the contents of this guide in the Teaching section of this website. You can see the way I break down my lessons to make sure I am teaching students to INVESTIGATE THE WORLD, RECOGNIZE PERSPECTIVES, COMMUNICATE IDEAS, and TAKE ACTION.
EDUCATING FOR GLOBAL COMPETENCE: 6 REASONS, 7 COMPETENCIES, 8 STRATEGIES, 9 INNOVATIONS
This article acts a brief summary or companion piece to the Asia Society guide. I really appreciate this concise article for those who want to get a full overview and some quick tips for getting started. Please take time to read through the 4 skills outlined in more detail in Asia Society guide. These are to INVESTIGATE THE WORLD, RECOGNIZE PERSPECTIVES, COMMUNICATE IDEAS, and TAKE ACTION. While it may seem easy to take for granted, these four skills become a major focus and measure in moving to global education .
ASIA SOCIETY: TEACHING FOR GLOBAL COMPETENCE IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD
This is another longer book from the Asia Society that introduces, explains, and guides implementation of Global Education. While similar in content, this offers a focus into assessment, implementing global education into specific subject areas, and teacher leadership, rather than a deep dive into the 4 skills. Like the previous guide, I would take this slowly and maybe with a group. You might want to skip to your subject for a more directed learning experience.
THE 3 Y'S
The 3 Y's Thinking Routine is a strategy that can be adapted to multiple lessons for reflection about Global Thinking. While this tends to be presented as a tool for global education, I believe it also supports Abolitionist teaching. I have students write on the three Y's at the beginning of units to help guide their practice, to support students discovery of the issues that they believe are most crucial to making the world a better place. I also write on the 3 Y's when planning units and lessons, so I fully understand why I am teaching a specific lesson and what I hope students will know, understand, and be able to do. Check out the Teaching page to see some examples!
WHAT DO GLOBALLY COMPETENT STUDENTS LOOK LIKE? AND SCHOOLING THE WORLD
It may not be entirely obvious why I grouped these two together. I think this article provides some popular rationale for global education. That said, it is not the reason that I believe in global education. While the article does discuss learning from the many voices that make make up the world, it emphasizes competition in modern, global markets. We do not have a consensus on the purpose of education, whether it is to get a job, to become a well-rounded citizen, or to provide students with the means to dismantle exploitative power structures. I believe in global education, not because I think we close achievement gaps, but because it can reveal to students the deliberate and racist history behind achievement gaps, the systems put in place all over the world to exploit and oppress. For this reason, I offer this documentary "Schooling the World: The White Man's Last Burden" as a rationale for global education that speaks to our need to learn, rather than teach.
DANGER OF A SINGLE STORY
This Tedtalk by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks to the foundation of stereotypes stemming from the lack of narratives and story about people outside our communities. This is another text that connects global education and abolitionist teaching, both addressing the need to teach BIPOC authors both within and outside of American and European perspectives. At our school, Freshman teachers introduce Adichie's TedTalk within the first few classes. The concept creates a foundation that Sophomore, Junior, and Senior teachers can refer back to as students engage with more complex topics on the issues of racism and its intersection with sexism, homophobia, transphobia, religious bigotry, and classism.
VIDEOS TO HELP YOU BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY
These video are here to help support you. I provided a lot of reading material above, but wanted to offer a few videos to help get you started. All of these videos are presentations or discussions offering a variety of definitions and perspectives on global education and citizenship
The United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a helpful focal point to engaging your students with global thinking by giving them an opportunity to choose relevant issues that matter to each individual student and demonstrate our connectedness with all living being on the planet. This list is not exhaustive, and admittedly has been criticized for leaving out some important goals. Personally, I believe there needs to be a category for racial justice because it's the justification for most, if not all, of the injustices listed.
What goals would you add to this list?
UNSDGS
Here they are in full. Take some time to explore the different goals. Each icon is clickable and gives more information and resources. There are also posters you can get to put up in your classroom to always remind students they should be learning with a purpose, always developing empathy for others. I like to use these to begin units, and guide student's research and creation. In another intersection between abolitionist teaching and global education, students should be given opportunities to create and take action, rather than consume. Check out my Poetry Unit on the Teaching page for an example.
GLOBAL VOICES: WHAT'S SO DIFFERENT ABOUT THE GLOBAL GOALS?
This video from 2015 introduces the UNSDGs, their initial conception as the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, and the successes, failures, and future of the United Nations Development Goals. I like the metaphor of a baby growing into their teens to think about the way movements grow, change, and come into themselves. As parents, the educators, thinkers, and speakers of this movement, we also have a responsibility to learn and change, continually assessing, evaluating, collaborating, and trying new approaches to empower students in a rapidly changing world.
WE THE PEOPLE FOR GLOBAL GOALS
This is a moving video that takes the viewer through all the goals. It is filled with activists, educators, artists, leaders and thinkers, all organizing with the ultimate hope that we the people of planet Earth will come together to create world where all people can thrive. The only thing I would want to add is to their focus on education. The global education movement believes that all children have the right to great education. hile I believe this to be true, I also think it's vital, especially as we work to recognize other perspectives, to challege assumptions that the Western style of teaching and learning is the only approach to educating our children. As much beauty comes from our system, it is only one and by definition narrow. We must learn from indigenous cultures whose thousands of different voices teach their children knowledges, skills, values, and philosophies, wisdom lost in a one-size- fits-all education model.
HELPING STUDENTS DEVELOPMENT EMPATHY INSTEAD OF SYMPATHY
This article by Colleen Clemens from Teaching Tolerance outlines a specific way UNSDG's have been used in the classroom as a means of developing empathy in our students father than just sympathy. While I think sympathy can often highlight our differences, eg. feeling bad for someone living without a home, but not being able to see yourself in that same situation, empathy is what actually helps us understand that we are all connected,not solely as human beings, but to all living things.
HOW TO TEACH THE THE UN'S DEVELOPMENT GOALS AND WHY
This article by Emily Reynolds from the British Council not only discusses the value in teaching from the UNSDG's, but also give some clear, specific ideas for how to teach the goals, integrating them into units and lessons already in your curriculum. For more examples about integrating the UNSDG's, check out the Teaching page on this site where I have posted my own lesson plans using UNSDG's
TEACHING UNSDG'S RESOURCE LIST
This is a rersource list compiled by Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms and IREX. It is such a wonderful list of readings, videos, lesson plans, assessments, and ideas for integrating the UNSDG's into your classroom that I wanted to share it. I have put it last because the list can be pretty overwhelming; with so many options, it's hard to know where to start. I have tried to pick one resource a week to explore, then consider if and how I might implement it into my curriculum.