Reflection on My Year as the World Affairs Council Teacher in Residence

The year I spent as Teacher in Residence at the World Affairs Council was a great gift.  The opportunity to be more closely involved with the World Affairs Council in general, and specifically the Global Classroom taught me that teachers are not working alone and unsupported in our efforts to provide children with accurate information and exciting and relevant experiences to further their learning and knowledge of the world.  The World Affairs Council of Seattle, now celebrating its 60^th year, brings our community together to learn about contemporary world issues and practice civic engagement.  The Global Classroom arm of the organization sponsors lectures and workshops designed to help teachers prepare classroom experiences that will engage students. It also reaches out to high school students directly with a Global Summer Institute and many opportunities to attend community programs during the school year at no cost to the students.

Cover of one of the fifty page resource packets
prepared during the 2010/2011 school year.

My year as the teacher in residence also provided me with weekly opportunities to research relevant online curriculum resources for teachers and students, and to create bibliographies of books at all reading levels around a topic or theme.  Now that I have returned to the classroom this year I find myself turning again and again to the online resources available at the World Affairs Council Global Classroom.  The resource packets are arranged by topic and were originally designed to support a specific workshop. The packets are extensive, however, and the articles, websites and book and film lists can be used to support many classroom social studies activities.  Knowing that the resources have been previewed can save teachers valuable time.  We all know that great information is readily available and that teachers are no longer isolated in a classroom with outdated social studies textbooks, but finding the time to search for the perfect site can still be a challenge.   During my year as the teacher in residence I always felt fortunate to have the time to wander from one website to another following a long chain of connected ideas.  

My class at the Columbia City Branch of the Seattle Public
Library to pick up books for our classroom.

Now, as a teacher with a classroom of students during the day and emails to write and lessons to plan in the evening I am happy to turn to what I know is a reliable source of current information.

It was in May 2010, at the International Leadership in Education dinner, that several ideas came together for me, and I understood more fully the need for a person to focus on early childhood and elementary level global education.  For the 2010/2011 school year I was able to do just that.  Here in Washington we have the most diverse school district in the nation located just a few miles south of Seattle.  The global community has truly come to us.  But how are teachers to prepare relevant curriculum to connect to the lives of these students?

Experiencing the city skyline from Elliot Bay.

Young children see and are aware of differences and similarities in their classmates.  Their natural curiosity is the greatest asset available for teachers to provide a forum for learning about and discussing varied cultural perspectives. In a classroom environment where differences are not acknowledged, children naturally assume that their curiosity about their classmates is unwelcome or rude. Empathy is replaced by silence, which creates an elephant in the room.  Young children do not have the learned biases of older students and adults.  By providing accurate information and relevant education in the elementary grades I believe biases can be begin to be replaced with greater compassion and understanding.  The challenge continues to be finding the time in most schools to immerse students in a study of a place far away and the culture and traditions of people who live there.  Teachers are asked to dedicate more and more time to basic skills and what students need to learn for the next required assessment.  But doesn’t it make more sense to make those skills relevant by using them to understand the world?

With Camille on a Puget Sound
beach on a field trip.

This September I joined a remarkable school community just entering its tenth year next fall.  The Lake and Park School is the vision of a truly gifted educator, Camille Hayward. 

Working together to dig a river on the shore of
Lake Washington.

I took over the Primary Classroom at Lake and Park where I am able to create integrated units of study for a mixed-age group of students.  We go out into the field on a regular basis, mapping the neighborhood, and as our name suggests using the shores of Lake Washington and the natural environment of Mt. Baker Park as a starting point for our exploration of the world.  Students learn by doing.  To understand world geography it is important to understand your local geography. 

After a year of reflecting on meaningful global education for young students I am back in the classroom more committed than ever to help create a learning environment where students can begin the journey of becoming world citizens.  What are your favorite resources to use in your classroom?

Linking the Classroom to the World through Film

We all know students who struggle in academic classes. Their reputations can precede them, and as they pass through the grades teachers already know their names. They are the ones who are kept inside during recess to finish up some work.  Their shoulders stoop a little more as they long to feel the fresh air, to let out a whoop, and to allow their bodies to wake up through spontaneous and unplanned movements. They are so ready to bounce from monkey bars to slide, back up the ladder and down the pole on the playground, where they know themselves. They are gifted and talented students - just not in the ways our system of education currently values young learners.  They are the square pegs being forced through round holes. 

Our country is nominally based on the personal freedoms and liberties of the individual, but too often our educational system lacks the flexibility to nurture these very same individuals.  By providing a rich curriculum and multifaceted approaches to learning our schools can successfully support and educate a wide range of learners.  As educators, our challenge is to find the right way to reach each student. Once motivated, a child is more open to taking difficult risks.  When his community views a child as successful, he will feel supported, and ready to take on the harder work in areas that do not come so easily.

For some students, physical coordination is the place they excel. For others, it may be in the arts.  If you are lucky enough to work in a school that offers art as a core subject to all students, the art teacher can be a great resource, offering a different and illuminating perspective. A student who struggles in reading or math may be a problem solver in the art studio - confident, cooperative, a leader and an inspiration to other students.  For the classroom teacher the challenge is to find a way to allow those talents to surface, or even to shine in the classroom, and to help the student use those skills to unlock the curriculum they find difficult.  A well-planned, integrated curriculum that takes into account various learning styles and multiple intelligences can do just that.

Elementary teachers across the country are learning to organize curriculum and inspire students through integrated social studies and science-based curriculum.  State standards and district lessons are woven into the fabric of the day, but do not overwhelm the student-driven work in these learning communities. There tends to be a common thread seen throughout these classrooms; a high level of student engagement, a guiding principal of mutual respect, project based learning, choice, creativity, and collaboration.

A well chosen film paints a picture of a another part of
the world and video keeps pace with the rapid 21st C.
changes in China. 

The technology available in classrooms today makes it easier to bring the world into the classroom.  The ability to view a short film clip is just a click away.  For students struggling with fluency in their reading, or second language learners working on comprehension, an activity based on something other than written language can provide the necessary bridge to a feeling of competence and inclusion. A well-chosen film used as an introduction to a new place or culture engages the entire group of students, and motivates the creation of projects that make follow-up activities rewarding for all. Learning about another culture’s point of view through further reading, writing, analysis of graphs, or map making is more meaningful when students can see that all of their classmates are involved.

Sometimes we can find ourselves struggling to find the right words to describe a place we can’t visit on a field trip.  With the fast pace of development in China in the 21^st century the illustrations in books can quickly become dated making them unattractive to students.  Film can be the answer to those problems.  Penny Rode wrote in her introduction to Using Art and Film to Teach Japan (Education About Asia, Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 2004) “As educators, one of our primary goals is to address the perception of Asia as strangely exotic and unfathomable, to take students beyond their comfortable Eurocentrism, and spark an interest and curiosity in the unfamiliar that will continue throughout their lives.  Combining art with film effectively advances these efforts”.  The combining of art and film also effectively addresses the diversity of student needs.

Do you have a favorite film you use in your classroom?  What strategies do you use to engage all the students in your class?


Don't forget to access the World Affairs Council Global Classroom Resource Packet.