Mark Twain is credited with the quote " Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." I had no way of knowing how true this quote would become to me. The opportunity to travel to Indonesia with Teachers For Global Classrooms has been the single most transformative professional development that I have ever experienced. My goal was to make connections for our students and teachers and to build relationships with other educators. What I experienced has become so much more. Some things so breathtaking I was awestruck with joy and other things so powerful they moved me to tears. Throughout the adventure I kept my guiding question in the forefront of my mind. In what specific ways do Indonesian schools provide innovative learning environments in which relationships produce inspiration and the drive to create positive change?
My initial goal when developing the guiding question was to discover innovative ways that educators are able to connect and collaborate. My initial desire was to find a way to connect through technology but what I soon discovered is that the schools that we visited in Indonesia have limited technology resources for students. Most schools have desktop computers in Administrative offices and teacher work rooms. A few schools had computer labs. A discussion with teachers led to the discovery that the kind of technology necessary to connect U.S. and Indonesian classrooms is not readily available. However, I did discover that almost all Indonesian students and teachers have personal cellular devices and an active social media presence. I started brainstorming ways that I could connect my students with the students at the schools we visited. One way is through postal mail. Many teachers expressed an interest in developing a pen pal relationship between their students and students in the US. Another way would be through collaborative tools like Padlet where a question could be established and students used their own Padlet app to respond. Another big challenge involves the difference in time between Indonesia and the US. Through discussion, the teachers agreed that we could work around that barrier by communicating through the app at different times. A couple of days into my host city visit I started to change my focus to the relationship component of my guiding question. There is no question that the educators I met have strong, positive working relationships with each other, Administration, and fellow students. It seems the whole country has a heart for caring for one another. I saw this through their religious practice of gathering together five times a day to pray and also in their daily commute. Almost all of the drivers that I employed to carry me from one location to another kept a small wad of low denomination rupiahs in their car console. They would had it out to beggars on the street often more than once. There was no fanfare it just seemed to be the thing to do. I also noticed that teachers built strong relationships with the students through mutual respect and greetings. The teachers also had a good relationship with Administration often sharing lunch as a group to discuss the events of the day. Families are very close and take care of their older members. I believe that it will be easy to build working relationships with educators and that they will be interested and willing to try new and innovative ways to connect our classrooms. The biggest thing that I walked away with is that educators are interested in making the connections and are willing to work around the barriers to find ways to communicate. I will continue to pursue this endeavor and look forward to the connections and ideas that will be shared.
TGC Reflection:
I really had no idea what I was doing when I started this course. I remember thinking during the second week that I was so far over my head. The first readings from the Asia Society were challenging because I could not see the big picture and was only seeing things from my limited perspective. Now that the course and travel experience have been completed, I understand global competencies and how they relate to me as an educator and how I can challenge colleagues and students to investigate the world, recognize perspectives, communicate and take action. The take action part is still the greatest struggle for me and I hope that I will find myself opening doors for students to be able to see themselves as global changemakers.
As stated above, I want to investigate ways for our school to take action from a global perspective. I want to continue to locate colleagues that are interested in global education and developing a working PLC that collaborates regularly to facilitate global education initiatives across our school district not just the elementary level. My plan is to continue to develop and provide professional development to encourage other educators to see global education as a necessity and an easy addition to an already great lesson instead of additional work.
I believe the assignments that had the biggest impact were the ones that included dialogue-- peer discussions and technology. I learned something every week from the discussion boards. I felt encouraged and empowered to try new things and also supported when I was feeling slightly overwhelmed. It would be awesome to have a chat feature built in so that it is not just text response. The other take away was all of the technology resources that I learned how to use. I ended up purchasing a subscription to Padlet so that I can get my students involved in discussions and response. I have always used Twitter but this course has challenged me to be more active in sharing and learning from others through the social media platform. I have increased PLC groups.
As a direct result of this course, I planned and facilitated a cultural night event at our school, a Empowering Girls to code event for Computer Science Education week where we heard from female computer scientists from around the world and have started working on specific global lesson plans for utilizing our newly constructed outdoor classroom as a learning space for global ideas such as the environment, conservation, recycling, food waste and hunger among other things. I was so thrilled with the outpouring of support from our families from the Cultural Night event. It was as if they had just been waiting to be invited to share their culture with other students and families. It was such a positive event that I still get goosebumps about when sharing. I am still working on faculty participation. I believe that everyone is very overwhelmed right now with the pressure of standardized testing and assessments. My question that I am still working on is how to convince teachers that global education is not “something extra”.
I have become much more confident as an educator and have been actively seeking opportunities to share what I have learned throughout this course and to find opportunities to lead. Personally, I am looking forward to the travel opportunity because I believe it will be the additional catalyst of change that will alter the way I view education forever.
I am so thankful to have a cohort that is inspiring and on fire for global education. I will admit that I felt “out of my league” for the first couple of weeks because it seemed that everyone already had such and amazing grasp on global education and were already doing such great things. I chose to learn from those ideas and to develop my own and it is such a gift to have other like- minded educators to share with and learn from.
The most powerful part of the course for me was the change that happened for me as a professional. I feel much more empowered to step out of my comfort zone and try new things including developing events, creating and presenting professional development and looking for new ways to be a teacher leader.
My initial goal when developing the guiding question was to discover innovative ways that educators are able to connect and collaborate. My initial desire was to find a way to connect through technology but what I soon discovered is that the schools that we visited in Indonesia have limited technology resources for students. Most schools have desktop computers in Administrative offices and teacher work rooms. A few schools had computer labs. A discussion with teachers led to the discovery that the kind of technology necessary to connect U.S. and Indonesian classrooms is not readily available. However, I did discover that almost all Indonesian students and teachers have personal cellular devices and an active social media presence. I started brainstorming ways that I could connect my students with the students at the schools we visited. One way is through postal mail. Many teachers expressed an interest in developing a pen pal relationship between their students and students in the US. Another way would be through collaborative tools like Padlet where a question could be established and students used their own Padlet app to respond. Another big challenge involves the difference in time between Indonesia and the US. Through discussion, the teachers agreed that we could work around that barrier by communicating through the app at different times. A couple of days into my host city visit I started to change my focus to the relationship component of my guiding question. There is no question that the educators I met have strong, positive working relationships with each other, Administration, and fellow students. It seems the whole country has a heart for caring for one another. I saw this through their religious practice of gathering together five times a day to pray and also in their daily commute. Almost all of the drivers that I employed to carry me from one location to another kept a small wad of low denomination rupiahs in their car console. They would had it out to beggars on the street often more than once. There was no fanfare it just seemed to be the thing to do. I also noticed that teachers built strong relationships with the students through mutual respect and greetings. The teachers also had a good relationship with Administration often sharing lunch as a group to discuss the events of the day. Families are very close and take care of their older members. I believe that it will be easy to build working relationships with educators and that they will be interested and willing to try new and innovative ways to connect our classrooms. The biggest thing that I walked away with is that educators are interested in making the connections and are willing to work around the barriers to find ways to communicate. I will continue to pursue this endeavor and look forward to the connections and ideas that will be shared.
TGC Reflection:
I really had no idea what I was doing when I started this course. I remember thinking during the second week that I was so far over my head. The first readings from the Asia Society were challenging because I could not see the big picture and was only seeing things from my limited perspective. Now that the course and travel experience have been completed, I understand global competencies and how they relate to me as an educator and how I can challenge colleagues and students to investigate the world, recognize perspectives, communicate and take action. The take action part is still the greatest struggle for me and I hope that I will find myself opening doors for students to be able to see themselves as global changemakers.
As stated above, I want to investigate ways for our school to take action from a global perspective. I want to continue to locate colleagues that are interested in global education and developing a working PLC that collaborates regularly to facilitate global education initiatives across our school district not just the elementary level. My plan is to continue to develop and provide professional development to encourage other educators to see global education as a necessity and an easy addition to an already great lesson instead of additional work.
I believe the assignments that had the biggest impact were the ones that included dialogue-- peer discussions and technology. I learned something every week from the discussion boards. I felt encouraged and empowered to try new things and also supported when I was feeling slightly overwhelmed. It would be awesome to have a chat feature built in so that it is not just text response. The other take away was all of the technology resources that I learned how to use. I ended up purchasing a subscription to Padlet so that I can get my students involved in discussions and response. I have always used Twitter but this course has challenged me to be more active in sharing and learning from others through the social media platform. I have increased PLC groups.
As a direct result of this course, I planned and facilitated a cultural night event at our school, a Empowering Girls to code event for Computer Science Education week where we heard from female computer scientists from around the world and have started working on specific global lesson plans for utilizing our newly constructed outdoor classroom as a learning space for global ideas such as the environment, conservation, recycling, food waste and hunger among other things. I was so thrilled with the outpouring of support from our families from the Cultural Night event. It was as if they had just been waiting to be invited to share their culture with other students and families. It was such a positive event that I still get goosebumps about when sharing. I am still working on faculty participation. I believe that everyone is very overwhelmed right now with the pressure of standardized testing and assessments. My question that I am still working on is how to convince teachers that global education is not “something extra”.
I have become much more confident as an educator and have been actively seeking opportunities to share what I have learned throughout this course and to find opportunities to lead. Personally, I am looking forward to the travel opportunity because I believe it will be the additional catalyst of change that will alter the way I view education forever.
I am so thankful to have a cohort that is inspiring and on fire for global education. I will admit that I felt “out of my league” for the first couple of weeks because it seemed that everyone already had such and amazing grasp on global education and were already doing such great things. I chose to learn from those ideas and to develop my own and it is such a gift to have other like- minded educators to share with and learn from.
The most powerful part of the course for me was the change that happened for me as a professional. I feel much more empowered to step out of my comfort zone and try new things including developing events, creating and presenting professional development and looking for new ways to be a teacher leader.