How might global education curriculum evolve to our new reality?
In collaboration with Fernando M. Reimers, Envoys is proud to co-host the 2020 Think Tank on Global Education for innovative educators to rapidly design and iterate new ways to meet the objectives of global education.
Overview
Global education has always been about transcending physical and geographic boundaries, making connections between individual experiences and transnational issues, and learning to work together to bring about the world that ought to be.
Now more than ever, we are witnessing the necessity for educational programming that develops the capacity and disposition to understand and take action on issues of global significance.
Program Details
Over the course of one day, you will join a cohort of educators from a diverse set of schools, gaining inspiration from expert speakers and engaging together in a virtual collaboration.
Following the precepts of design thinking, teams joining this think tank will develop prototypes for programming that support learner agency, facilitate learning across differences, and demonstrate results to different stakeholders.
With feedback and input from experts and learners around the world, selected work will be serve as the basis for a companion workbook for Dr. Reimers’ recent publication Educating Students to Improve the World.
Three percent of all conference proceeds will be donated directly to our small-locally owned partners in the countries Envoys operates within to help weather the economic effects of COVID-19.
Regular registration for the May 30th conference has closed. Limited spots are available–please click above to inquire and be put on the mailing list for future sessions.
To facilitate multiple attendees per institution, costs are set as follows:
$350 : 1 participant
$600: 2 participants
$825: 3 participants
Who Should Attend
- K-12 educators invested in global education, including those currently working to increase students’ global competencies and those new to this effort
- School teams comprised of teachers, curriculum directors, instructional coaches, and principals
- Teams comprised of school and district leaders
- Teacher educators
- Nonprofit leaders who collaborate with districts and schools
Outcomes and Policies
“The purpose of this book is to bring together [the] worlds of scholarship and practice, offering a theoretical multidimensional model of global education that places teachers, school principals, and other school-level actors at the center of defining what global education should be and how it should be done and which can support their professional choices with a systemic and comprehensive approach to developing programs of global education that are responsive to the needs and characteristics of specific schools and local contexts.“
Selected work from the Think Tank will be published in a companion workbook for Dr. Reimers’ recent publication Educating Students to Improve the World. All participants receive a certificate of participation and a letter confirming clock hours of instruction.
Payment is due at registration, and all fees are non-refundable.
Conference Sessions
Sessions will run according to the following schedule (ET)rnrnMay 30thrn9:00AM to 12:00 PMrnrn12:30 PM to 5:00 PMrnrnWe meet virtually and discuss our unique learning environments, determining the commonalities and differences in our global strategic plans and setting the stage for the work to come. We create usable norms to aid our processes for collaborative work, and make visible our respective personal and professional goals.
We delve into the various models and studies around global competency, seeking clarification on the skill-sets that matter for success now and in the future. From cultural competency to increasing language fluency to building empathic outlooks, we work to understand what has been proven(so far) to work for all the things that we try to achieve. rnrnWe then push ourselves to consider ‘what next?’ through a series of empathic interviews with professionals from a variety of domains, including finance, the military, and public service, learning about their needs and their dreams for what students need to know to be globally aware and globally competent.
The team comes together to draft working objectives on what students need to thrive in a fast changing environment and to be of value in the world to come. These ‘lighthouses’ provide key touchpoints as the team moves into the bulk of the design and creation phase.
This phase comprises the bulk of each team’s work on the first day. Facilitated discussions on designing effective learning contexts, including both structured and unstructured pathways for transformational learning experiences, lead to the rapid creation of prototype curricular interventions. Guidelines for 10-12 hours of content provide initial structure for creation, with teams provided with autonomy to adapt according to their own innovation.
Participants use a series of ‘microlessons’ to test out their lesson and activity designs with student groups. They receive a mixture of warm and cool feedback. Each team uses the results of their tests to iterate and improve their curriculum, making robust teaching plans and learning activities. Participants are further scaffolded to create ‘teaching guides’ to allow others to use (and further iterate) on their work.
Following a ‘jigsaw’ methodology, participants break into groups to re-examine how their separate innovations are set up for success (or failure) according to cultural, psychological, institutional, professional, or political dimensions. Returning together, each group discusses how to adapt and expand on their designs in order to best ensure lasting change within their particular educational institution.
Each team shares their work, noting both the results and crystallizing the lessons learned along the way. Each curricular project is set as the basis to be compiled into a companion workbook for Fernando Reimers’ forthcoming publication Educating Students to Improve the World, and shared during the upcoming Virtual Think Tank on Global Education
Want to know more?
