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  We all know that great information is readily available and that teachers are no longer isolated in a classroom with outdated social studies textbooks, but finding the time to search for the perfect site can still be a challenge.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?

A Grain of Salt

“The convergence of media and technology in a global culture is changing the way we learn about the world and challenging the very foundations of education.  No longer is it enough to be able to read the printed word; children, youth, and adults, too, need the ability to both critically interpret the powerful images of a multimedia culture and express themselves in multiple media forms.”

Elizabeth Thoman and Tessa Jolls

Media Literacy: A National Priority for a Changing World

If our goal is a media literate population, then as teachers we can start our work when students first enter the preschool or kindergarten classroom.  In my classroom our day begins with a morning note.  The note serves multiple purposes.  It may be to share important information about our day.  It may present a provocative idea, asking students for an opinion that will be discussed at our morning meeting.  I might post a photograph or a cartoon from the morning paper and ask students to interpret what is going on.  Each of these encourages students to practice and hone their media literacy skills.

As we absorb information from our surroundings we are each making our own meaning.  I like to give young students lots of opportunities to share their own interpretations and to listen to their classmates’ perspectives.  Asking clarifying questions, seeking additional information, and always considering whose point of view is being shared, are habits of mind that will support media literacy at any age.   Creating a classroom culture that supports students as they learn to respectfully question each other, share information, and collaborate on multi-media projects will support students in becoming media literate.

If you have a daily story time in your classroom, chances are you already are helping your students to become media literate.  Consider the classic story of The Blind Men and the Elephant, or the picture book Foolish Rabbit’s Big Mistake, by Rafe Martin, in which the animals run off, one after another, to tell someone else the horrible news, without considering their source or asking any questions.  We can all smile at the foolish mistake in this traditional tale, but we should remember to stand back and think about how this all too common behavior affects our lives.   For example, when 374 out of 533 members of the United States Congress voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002, without carefully reading all of the available documentation, or questioning the sources of that information, the consequences were far more serious. 

The Center for Media Literacy Core Concepts Matrix

In a world of 24/7-news spin and an estimate of over 200 million blogs worldwide, access to information appears limitless.  Guidelines for reading critically, questioning appropriately and identifying falsehoods are necessary. The Center for Media Literacy provides an inquiry-based approach to teaching the skills which lead to objective awareness.  The five core concepts and five key questions developed by the Center help to guide the process of becoming media literate. 

Our job as teachers is to make sure students have the opportunity to access available information and the skills to make it meaningful.  Share the ways you accomplish this in your classroom.

Questioning the Schedule: Reading about Social Studies in the Elementary Classroom

Taking in the view from Songzanlin Monastery

When you talk to elementary school teachers these days about what they are teaching and how their days with students unfold you may be surprised by the impact of the controversial No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) on every aspect of the average classroom experience.  High standards and accountability make sense in theory and may sound reasonable in federal offices, where there are no teachers, and no children. There the ideas are translated into priorities for the all-important funding of public education. Ironically, their impact on this most recent generation of students comes right at the time when the importance of global awareness as an essential element of education should be increasingly obvious.

Watching the folk dance in Zhongdian.

If you were asked to choose a discipline that would serve as the bridge that connects all aspects of elementary education, something tells me it would not be test taking. For me, in this rapidly shrinking world, it would be Social Studies. I see learning about People as the territory in which reading, math, science and art all come together. And yet, in schools across Washington State, teachers are left with as little as three forty-five minute periods a week to teach art, social studies and science.  This is a choice most schools have made in the hopes of improving test scores and demonstrating increased student learning. Whether preparing for tests is learning has thus far not been demonstrated.

In the present educational environment exemplary teaching can be found in classrooms where the teachers are willing to go against the grain of current trends and school culture.  Richard Allington summarizes the habits of these teachers in his article The Six Ts of Effective Elementary Literacy Instruction (2002).  For students to become proficient readers they must spend time reading at a comfortable or “easy” level.  That is different for each student.  The scripted one-size-fits-all model that continues to gain momentum is the exact opposite of what kids need. 

Classrooms should be filled with books at appropriate levels and kids should spend time reading throughout the day.  With a little bit of extra effort a teacher can put together book boxes that change every six weeks or so around the theme of an integrated study (Social Studies!).  The class can all be reading books about the same topic, not the same book. The World Affairs Council Global Classroom is one place teachers can turn to find relevant resources and information, including book lists, organized around topics that support a vibrant social studies curriculum for elementary classrooms.

A study of the Tibetan Plateau, the roof of the world, is a place where social studies and science come together.  Through the use of maps and geography skills young students can begin to think about the significance of a place that holds the most ice of any place besides the Polar Regions.  The fact that this ice is the source of the major rivers of Asia, which provide drinking water for over two billion people makes for very interesting reading, at any level.

I would use a book like A Drop Around the World by Barbara McKinney (1998) along with two beautiful books by Thomas Locker, Mountain Dance (2002) and Water Dance (2002) to stimulate class discussions about water.  Once the group has spent some time looking at the maps and identifying the major rivers I would begin to ask questions about the people who live in this unique environment.  I would share Tibetan Tales from the Top of the World by Naomi Rose (2009) to begin a discussion of Tibetan culture.  Another book that I would be sure to include in my classroom study would be The Chiru of High Tibet by Jacqueline Briggs Martin (2010) that tells the true story of these endangered animals and the people who are trying to protect them.

Effective teachers understand that the best way to improve reading skills is to read more.  Given that the current classroom schedule provides time for reading, it is more a practical than a radical solution to spend some of that time reading about essential topics that are being squeezed out of the curriculum.

The use of picture books to learn about Tibet supports each student’s need to practice reading to become better readers.  It also addresses the need for our students to become global citizens of the 21^st century through learning more about the world and its people throughout the school day, everyday.  Not in just 45 minutes a week.