DETAILED PROGRAM SCHEDULE

+Why do people move? An Example of a Global Studies Collaboration in the Lower School

Kelly Willis, Maggie Shamblin, Meghan Rinehart, & Sara Best, Charlotte Latin School, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

Classroom and Virtual Curriculum Development

This presentation will show how a team of Lower School faculty transformed a “traditional” 3rd grade textbook unit on Immigration into a 6-week collaborative project integrating Social Studies, Global Studies, Library Skills, and Educational Technology. Beginning with the essential question “Why do people move?”, students learned about the history of  immigration to the United States, discussed some of the issues surrounding global immigration and migration today, and reflected on the global refugee crisis. The unit culminated in a student-led podcast called “Do You Know…?” in which students curated their own questions to interview 25 different members of our faculty and staff about their personal immigration stories. We’ll share our process, resources, lessons learned, and plans for the future.

+Environmental Leadership Through Collaborative Student Travel in Greenland

Ann Hansen, Herlufsholm Skole og Gods, Copenhagen, Denmark

Travel Program Development and Oversight

There are simply not enough examples of what teaching environmental leadership through travel can look like. Join this presentation to learn about the 6-year process thus far of considering, developing, funding, postponing, scouting and finally running an environmental project in Greenland, for two years now. Students from multiple schools gather to experience this unique location where the effects of climate change are evident and significant, and they ideally leave with an increased passion and skill set for acting as a climate ambassador in their various local and domestic communities. The presentation will focus primarily on curriculum development, program management and risk assessment in relation to the project, candidly sharing what has been learned over time and what might be forthcoming!

+Bring the Globe to You: Hosting an Author-in-Residence

Kat Zilka, University School of Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Schoolwide Global Education Efforts

What if, instead of sending a few members of our school communities out into the world, we brought the globe to us? In the independent school community, global programming often includes travel, but Covid’s disruption to travel invited a reframing of global initiatives at the University School of Milwaukee, resulting in an inaugural Author-in-Residence program. Come hear how this program idea developed for our PK-12 school, including concrete programming, schedule ideas, mistakes to avoid, and more. Note: The “author-in-residence” model can be expanded to experts in any field, including scientists, journalists, artists, and more.

+Cross-Pollinating Standards: Fair Trade Learning & GYA’s 2023 Standards

Ethan Knight and Samrat Urval, Gap Year Association, Missoula, Montana, USA

Professional Growth for Global Educators

The Gap Year Association’s Standards & Accreditation Committee are pleased to present the 2023 Fair Trade Learning (FTL) standards and rubric as part of our newly released 2023 GYA Standards. These FTL standards are built around 14 core principles that emphasize the importance of owning mistakes on the sending side of international education rather than forcing host communities to continue suffering through well-intended, but ultimately costly, mistakes.

The FTL Standards represent a functional rubric for organizations to ethically engage in service opportunities, especially where intrinsic power differences are most ingrained. The standards have been adapted in collaboration with the Community Based Global Learning Collaborative: a nonprofit headquartered at Cornell University, and helmed largely by Eric Hartman, PhD and a phalanx of other informed parties.

The session will be a mix of presentation and circumstance-based discussion.

+Action Research as a Tool for Exploring Assessment

GEBG Action Research Fellows Trina Clemans, Collegiate School (VA, USA); Patrice Wright-Lewis, Pace Academy (GA, USA); Beth Yavenditti, St. Luke’s School (CT, USA)

Schoolwide Global Education Efforts

GEBG’s Action Research Fellows utilize action research to improve the practice of global education at their schools and explore challenges within the fields of global education and competency based learning. Come hear from a group of Fellows who focused on how they might assess student global competence development in a high school class, in a range of middle school travel programs, and across a whole K-12 school. They will share how they determined a topic related to their current practice and existing goals, and designed an action research project to collect and analyze data, and garner insights to inform their work. 

+PANEL: Community Engagement and Partnerships for Global Teaching and Learning

Facilitated By: Dion Crushshon, Director of Global Programs, The Blake School, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Panelists:

> Erin English, Director of Experiential Learning, Stuart Center for Global Leadership, Lake Forest Academy, IL, USA

> Mark Bruce-Miller, CEO, Experiential Education New Zealand (ExpedNZ), New Zealand

> Kevin Murungi, Director of Global Civic Engagement and Social Impact, Brooklyn Friends School, NY, USA

> Carlos García Hernández, Global Education Facilitator, La Meridional, Madrid, Spain

Many GEBG Schools have been taking a thoughtful look at how power and privilege play into school partnerships and relationship-based travel programs. For example, some schools have reframed “service learning” as “community engagement” in pursuit of developing a balanced and mutually beneficial environment for this type of teaching and learning. What are some of the essential ethical and logistical questions that schools and educators leading this work are addressing, and what types of programs and partnerships might we want to develop as we better serve our students and communities?

+Addressing Schoolwide Global Education Objectives through Meaningful School-to-School Partnerships

Kassandra Brenot, Santa Catalina School, Monterey, CA, USA & Martin Chatgnon, Saint-Denis International School, Loches, France

Schoolwide Global Education Efforts

Saint Denis International School (Loches, France) and Santa Catalina School (Monterey, California, USA) connected through the GEBG and signed a partnership agreement in October 2022. This school-to-school partnership has and will continue to allow us the opportunity to develop programming in pursuit of our schools’ broader global education objectives and to sustain meaningful, relationship-based global opportunities for years to come. Specifically, we have launched a student exchange program developed around shared learning goals and deep mutual understanding of the strengths and challenges of our institutions, utilizing various school models and protocols provided within the GEBG Community. Join this session to learn about the process of how we created our partnership, developed a shared vision, and planned and are conducting our first set of student exchanges based on model practices, personal relationships, and strong intercultural communication!

+Partnerships Build Bridges Between Environmental Travel Programs and Your Community

Ross Sappenfield, Vail Mountain School, Vail, Colorado & Laura Dinerman, Ecology Project International, Missoula, Montana, USA

Travel Program Development and Oversight

This session will focus on the importance of field experiences in instilling a genuine love of the natural world in students and motivating them to take action in their classrooms, schools, and local communities to address critical environmental issues. The right partnership between a school and host field experience organization can catalyze this learning journey. 

Ross Sappenfield will share the story of how the partnership between Vail Mountain School and Ecology Project International grew into a lasting relationship that is embedded into the community with measurable positive student outcomes. Inspired by this success, EPI designed Professional Development programs and classroom-ready online resources that engage students in deep learning about complex global environmental issues. EPI, like Ross is doing for his students, supports teachers in their efforts to connect what they teach in the classroom to scientific exploration in the field, and create positive change in their own communities.

+Empowering Youth Using Migration Stories in Curriculum As Windows, Mirrors and Sliding Doors.

Karina Baum, Buckingham, Browne, and Nichols School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA & Abeer Shinnawi, Re-Imagining Migration, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Classroom and Virtual Curriculum Development

We will share the work we conducted in partnership with the Re-Imagining Migration (RIM) team to redesign BB&N’s Grade 5 Social Studies curriculum. We will show how we deepened the understanding of migration while promoting essential dispositions for participating in a world of migration: the capacity to stay curious, understand multiple perspectives and identify similarities and differences of migration experiences and how those shaped people and communities. Guided by BB&N’s Global Competency Framework, our teachers utilized shared practices to foster engagement in critical reflection and ongoing anti-bias & anti-racist learning to help students develop their own identities and become agents for change. By teaching a range of skills related to human migration, students learned about others’ lives – as if peering through a window to a new world – while at the same time offering a mirror with which to examine their own or their family’s story of migration. One way we did so was to demonstrate how analyzing historical US immigration policy aids in understanding immigration patterns today. Additionally, we used Project Zero’s Thinking Routines for deeper inquiry and encouraging action.

+The Day After a Crisis. Managing the Aftermath of a Traumatic Event

Santiago Enrique-Arias & Sophie Paris, Ms. Porter’s School, Farmington Connecticut, USA

Risk Management

Having an emergency or a crisis while traveling with students is always a traumatic experience that most times leaves an impact that lasts long after the immediate emergency is resolved. While we have many valuable resources to manage emergencies in-country, we often find ourselves without a roadmap to deal with the aftermath of a traumatic event that has left both faculty and students in shock and emotionally drained. In this presentation, we will explore the effects of emergencies on the whole group, and how to address the fallout of a group crisis. We will review some protocols for communication and strategies to get the group back on track to fulfill its program goals.

+Proof of Impact: Evaluating Outcomes of Global Education and Immersion

Holly Djang, Global Citizen Year, Oakland, California, USA

Schoolwide Global Education Efforts

We know that global education and intercultural experiences have a positive impact on students, both immediately as they participate in these experiences and throughout their lives. But how do we prove it?

In partnership with researchers at Harvard University, Global Citizen Year has been able to demonstrate unequivocally that our immersive intercultural learning experiences are impactful. Our programs result in statistically significant growth in Global Competence, as well as college readiness and mental health and happiness. Our students also develop the hard skills associated with 21st Century Learning and Global Competence including: collaboration and teamwork, giving and receiving feedback, critical and creative thinking, and analytical skills. 

You will walk away with an understanding of some of the pitfalls and challenges in evaluating these programs, and some tips on how to up-level your evaluation efforts. These tips will position you to deliver more scientifically-robust results that prove the positive impact of global education and immersion.

+PANEL: Girls as Global Citizens

Facilitated By: Megan Murphy, Global Executive Director, International Coalition of Girls’ Schools

Panelists:

> David Colón, Head of School, Visitation Academy, MO, USA

> Kristin Read, Director Of Global Citizenship, St. Mildred’s-Lightbourn School, ON, Canada

> Michael Ciuni, Director of Fellowships in Global Citizenship, Hathaway Brown School, OH, USA

> Melissa Brown, Director of Diversity, Wellbeing and Global Education, Holton-Arms School, MD, USA

Girls’ Schools possess a unique opportunity to cater their global programs and efforts to their communities. Many girls schools within the GEBG community have been actively building and designing programs that center girls leadership and development as global citizens. How do girls’ schools committed to global education utilize their unique educational focus and community make-up to develop student-centered opportunities that also acknowledge specific competency targets, risk areas, and strategic goals? What can all schools learn from girls schools about creating global education that supports empowering our students that identify as female?