Why a Global Ed Guide?
I was awarded a Fulbright fellowship for Teachers for Global Classrooms for the 2018-2019 school year. This Global Ed Guide is the culmination of everything that I have learned in the past year through on-line coursework, the Global Ed Symposium in Washington D.C. and a field experience in Sénégal in April of 2019 . I hope you can find the resources and insights helpful in creating your own Global Classroom. This guide is divided into 3 sections:
- STUDY: Learn all about Global Ed
- TEACH: Lessons you can use in your FL classroom
- TRAVEL: Read by Sénégal Stories Travel blog and see my research conducted in Sénégal
What is Global Ed?
STUDY
Digital Learning
Using technology is a great way to bring the world into your classroom. First, I have a few links to talk about technology use in the classroom. Then I have added a few ways that I used current trends to globalize my French lessons.
Google Earth. Lesson where Level 1 students do a scavenger hunt to find city places around the globe.
Fligrid. Level 2 lesson where students used the Dollar Street webpage to research daily routines at various income levels around the globe. They incorporated their findings into a presentation uploaded onto Flipgrid. Classmates watched each others videos which led to an Interpersonal Speaking assignment.
Canva, Piktochart,Venngage. Students in the AP level created their own infographics to make a cultural comparison between family structures in the US and in other Francophone countries.
Global Ed Assessment Tools
Here are a few tools you can use with your students to assess your students’ global competencies.
The Globally Competent Learning Continuum. I love this one because you can use it to really show growth across the high school years.
Checklist for Teaching for Global Competency. This is a great tool for teachers to use. It really makes you reflect upon your global lessons.
ACTFL World Readiness Standards . Every FL teacher’s bible! Make sure you are planning to incorporate all 5 C’s!
TEACH
My PBL Unit for AP French
You can find the complete unit I created to here. Students were give the choice to study and research from any of the AP French Themes. Additional resources for this project can be found under the Documents tab on my Home page. Or you can click here.
Local Community Resource List
These sites may help you make global connections within your own community. (Descriptions provided are taken directly from the websites themselves)
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “A partisan membership organization that provides insight on critical global issues.”
Global Kids. “Global Kids educates, activates and inspires youth from underserved communities to take action on critical issues facing our world.”
ePals “A community where learners connect with classrooms around the world.”
WorldSavvy. An organization that “works with communities to support globally competent instruction, co-create transformative schools, and empower students as changemakers.”
Chicago Sister Cities “Bringing the world to Chicago and Chicago to the world”.
TRAVEL
Travel Blog
Sénégal Stories. Here you can read about my travels and teaching in Sénégal.
Guiding Question and Reflection
What are the best methods for producing speakers of language?
My Guiding Question while I was in Sénégal was one that I am most passionate about: language learning and teaching. My quest was to learn as much from the teachers there about how they teach a foreign language to their students and to share everything that I know with them.
I was able to see a variety of English language classes in Sénégal and a few different teachers. In addition, I was able to see a French language class as well. These are my findings:
- Students everywhere LOVE to use the language they are learning. I know it sounds crazy to say that, but for so many years language teaching concentrated on writing and grammatical correctness. The focus in most of the classrooms that I observed showed students using the language. All of the students were so very excited and proud to speak English with me.
- Younger students were most open and excited. As the students get older, they get more worried about accuracy in their speaking. I notice this in my own students as well. The middle school children in Sénégal were so open and loved to speak to me. The older students (at the end of their high school careers) would speak to me but they were much more reserved and worried about making mistakes. It is our job as language teachers to make them confident in their speaking abilities- even as they age.
- Sentence starters are KEY to having students at the novice level communicate. My American students wrote letters to the students in Sénégal and the Senegalese students responded to them. The teacher put a number of sentence starters on the board. Not only did this aid in giving them ideas on what to write, it made them more confident in their writing. Novice level students should be using memorized phrases anyway and should not be required to produce in the language yet.
- Kids want to know about other kids! Both my students at home and the students abroad were the most interested in learning about the lives of each other. They wanted to see pictures of them, their school, their homes, their lives. Curiosity is such a great motivator for learning! This curiosity is what should spark our units when we are planning them. When teaching a unit on school, make sure they talk to some students in the target culture about school. The same can be said for every thematic unit we teach. My partner teacher in Sénégal and I are planning some units where the students can talk to each other about their lives.
- Language teaching is more than teaching the language! Language is incorporating Culture, Comparisons, Connections and Communities into the Communication piece. My day teaching baseball to a PE class was my favorite day. To look around and see the smiles and the laughing and the camaraderie amongst us all…it was magical. I was able to teach a little bit about the US and hopefully, these 60 students and the other students that I met and talked to and taught, walked away with a favorable opinion of the US. I hope that my students at my high school are able to see that kids are kids everywhere and that we are more similar than different. Understanding others and being reminded that we are all in this world together was my goal in undertaking this endeavor.
- Professional development and collaboration for language educators is so important. There were a variety of opportunities for the educators in Sénégal to meet with other English teachers. Most of the teachers were members of various English Teacher organizations. I find that teachers in the United States that are involved with professional organizations such as ACTFL and AATF, are the best teachers. They stay current in their profession and share ideas.
- Strong, supportive administration is a necessary component of teacher happiness and retention. I met a number of administrators at the various school I was at, and they were all so supportive of their teachers and of me and my American counter-part. All invited us to return. All spent time talking to us and getting to know us. All sang the praises of their teachers. We talk a lot about teacher burn-out in the US and I think a non-supportive administration is one of the main reasons as to why teachers want to leave the profession.
I am planning on keeping in touch with all of the teachers that I met. In fact, my host teacher and I talk several times a week. We have made lot of plans for our students to talk and communicate throughout the upcoming school year. These are friendship that can last a lifetime- for the teachers and for our students.
This website is not an official U.S. Department of State website. The views and information presented are the participant’s own and do not represent the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Program, the U.S. Department of State, or IREX.