Students as Global Citizens

Think
One of the most important characteristics of a global citizen is how he/she thinks. Because most of our actions stems from how and what we think. If we think as a global citizen, we would certainly do the things that a global citizen does. Therefore, the first thing I want to teach my students is to think outside the box, or even as if there is no box. Integrating an international perspective into the curriculum, so that they would not be narrow-minded.

To think outside the box, we have to first open the box that we usually live in-- Introducing an outside world to the classroom in a vivid and tangible way. Each week, we would have a theme country to study about their culture, learn the local music, and facts. In the morning, we would play and teach a music from that country, and let the students sing together. For example, if the theme country is Spain, we would learn a popular Spanish song, and learn a short Flamenco dance from a video or a dance teacher.

Actions
I would use EPALS to connect to a classroom in Spain, and set up a skype or zoom video conference with the teacher and students in that classroom. I would introduce myself and my class to my ePals, create either a video or text introduction telling them where we are from and some things about our class and community. Students in the class could also participate in the introduction and video conference. After introduce to each other, we would see in what ways are these two classes differ from each other? Share our thoughts by replying to our partner's post or video questions.

By the "filters" function, we could choose a country, student age range and language spoken that we want to connect. I chose "Spain", and then the classroom teachers from Spain popped up. After choosing for a classroom that we want to connect and partner with, we would start a journey of exploring another culture.

Week one would be music, week two is food.  In the "Explore collaborations" section of the website, we could have culture exchange with our partner class. We would exchange traditional recipes with our partner class; analyze how recipes can reflect geography and culture. By looking closely at the ingredients, cooking tools and directions of a local recipe, we could discover a lot about the country and culture it comes from. I would invite students to share their ideas and questions about the recipe; I would lead them to think about these questions: what do the ingredients reveal about the partner class's location or climate? What do the preparation techniques and tools say about partner class's geography or culture? What cultural traditions does this food reflect? In the end, I would give students the homework to make and taste a recipe provided by our ePals, and a collaboration project to combine recipes to create a cookbook and discover firsthand what's different and good about their cultural cuisines!

Week three is history. We would share with each other about important historic sites, structures or landmarks from our own country. I would ask students to identify 3 different types of historic places to share with our partner class, and they normally would share with us their historic sites as well. Students are asked to create a presentation with Prezi or Powerpoint to introduce the place they have chosen to their partner class.

Week four, students will exchange folktales of their own country with each other. After one month study of different features of a foreign country, students' horizon has been broadened, they could learn to appreciate another culture and language, and they were able to talk and interact with students of the same age from that country. They could even further develop deeper friendship with our partner class's students by writing emails or snail mails to learn more about each other. Maybe one day travel to that country to visit their pen-pals!

The problem with this Global citizens class is that the connection to some classroom might not as effective as we thought, some partner teachers might not be as responsive and cooperative. I think it's better for the teacher to plan ahead, and connect to several classrooms in advance, and choose one that response well and establish a stable connection and partnership with that partner classroom. With the great distance in between two classrooms, students' responsiveness might also be an issue of concern. Teacher could take some time to encourage students to reach out and make a penpal and write to a student friend before and after class. That way when they are seeing each other through online classroom, they would feel more familiar and easy to talk with with their already established friendship.