Week 2 - Reading Response (The Five Cs of Global Education)
Which strategy for fostering an area of global competency do you find most compelling as an educator, and how you might apply it in an existing unit you teach (or in some other way in the work you do)?
10 Replies
One of the strategies outlined in the article is to use an open attitude and address the stereotypes about different cultures. I have been doing this activity for the past 3 weeks, a little each week, and I am approaching the culminating activity. I had my students write on post-its, the stereotypes concerning religions, gender, abilities, cultures, skin colour, etc. I colour coded them so that it gives the students a visual when talking about the different stereotypes. The discussion generated, was amazing. Students were able to recognize stereotypes found in magazines, television shows, newspapers, etc.
I think that, in doing these types of activities, we, as educators, bring to life, a subject that is often hidden or deemed taboo. By expunging these stereotypes, students are given an autentic picture of a culture.
I believe in empowering students with connectedness through empathy , a strategy which can be applied to myriad of projects. I often in the past have given my students of various computer technology classes the task of building a web site dedicated to an endangered animal in the world. As part of the assignment the students explore the habitat and why the animal is becoming extinct –is it because it is being used for food by the local people, or does it interfere with the daily lives/food production in the region. On one of the pages of the web site the students are to suggest a way to save the animal from extinction. Alongside research of the endangered animal they an explore the lives of people across the globe, their culture, economy, even share information about different regions. I have observed students, weeks later, still talk about what they have learned, a sense of connectedness to the plight of the endangered animal develops which extends to the people living in the region.
I strongly agree with the importance the author places on building empathy. One of the strategies I am glad she included was "Allow students to give voice to their misperceptions" under the Self-Awareness stage. I think many times when a student says something controversial our instinct is to quickly hush him/her up by saying: "That's not right," or "It's not good to think that way." If we really want to affect change, we should listen to our students and try to understand why they are saying what they are saying. If a student is coming to the class with racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. beliefs we obviously need to address it, but we will be able to do so more effectively by understanding the root of where that student's beliefs come from in the first place.
One thing that troubled me with this article was Arida's multiple references to a "global playing field" in which our students will be future "competitors." To me, this invokes winning and losing and putting other people down so you can rise up. Isn't this the kind of thinking that can easily give rise to
unfair trade or exploitation of others in the name of "it's all part of the rules of the game?" Would there be a way to reference the need for awareness of global economy by invoking images of co-operation instead of images of a dog-eat-dog world?
Steve, I agree with the importance of making students self-aware, and allowing them to "give voice to their misperceptions". I think sharing stories of our own growth can help students realize that learning to become culturally proficient is a path. I think it is essential for students to feel comfortable to voice opinions, but as educators we also have to face the tough discussions that come up, and give all opinions their space. We don't know where certain misperceptions are coming from exactly, and it is our responsibility to try to understand. Empathy is a great starting point for building common ground.
In my response to "Powerful Learning," I mentioned having students consider a project based on the problem of communication with other cultures to study Romeo and Juliet. This article definitely helps crystallize some of those ideas. The idea of giving students a survey to help them become more self-aware about the culture they live in and other cultures seems particularly compelling to me, since we often assume that since we all speak English, we all communicate in the same way. Of course, this is not true as there are a lot of cultural norms that we must maneuver around, and bringing this up in relation to Shakespeare may be helpful for my students. I would then love to move along the stages to get to the point where we role play cross-cultural interchanges, which seems the most useful skill amongst many useful cross-cultural skills. Being able to understand another person despite any communication barrier (language and even non-verbal) is such an empowering skill.
The strategy for fostering an area of global competency that I will try to utilize more consciously is providing students with the building blocks of cultural knowledge. There is an activity that I do with my Grade 12's that serves this exact purpose of providing students the with historical foundation to fully comprehend and engage in a discussion dependent upon possessing vital cultural knowledge of Canada's First Nations population. The guiding question we discuss is whether First Nations students should be taught using an aboriginal-focused curriculum. To ensure that the class can start to understand the systemic harm of Residential Schools on the First Nations population I give each student a card with different coloured lines on it. Each student is to stand if their card has that colour, as it provides the class with a visual representation of the statistics about the conditions of Residential Schools ( ie the percentage of students subjected to physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and death). By giving the students a brief glimpse at the cultural history of Canadian First Nations they are better able to fully engaged in the class discussion. It is pertinent activities like this one that I would like to add more consciously to my future lessons plans when integrating global issues.
There is reference made in this piece about using role play to foster cross cultural skills. I would use this strategy all the way across the various stages of building cross cultural competence, connectedness and collaboration, particularly as awareness moves from 'self' to 'other'. The deep work around empathy that can come from role play has the power to work on many levels of learning - including social, emotional, critical thinking and point of view. I would however caution around using role play as a 'simulation' that is generalized and prone to expressing and perpetuating stereotypes. Exploring the deep complexities of cultural context through a story, image, event or real lived experience as expressed from many points of view is important. This becomes a dramatic role play - where multiple perspectives (including missing or absent voices) can be explored in order to deepen understanding rather than skim the surface. In drama, we can use real world events and explore them 'safely' and respectfully in role - engaging personal voice and imagination, asking many many questions as well as exploring authentic voice.
This post was edited on: 2013-04-01 at 07:12 PM by: Lorraine Sutherns
This post was edited on: 2013-04-01 at 07:14 PM by: Lorraine Sutherns
Hi Valentine,
I agree with you, empathy is a strong connector. With our children being brought up in smaller families with less siblings and relatives, in urban settings without pets to look after, empathy is an emotion largely left out. How important then, to include it while developing perspective. Great idea as well, to research the background of the endangered animal as a part of that perspective.
As an urban teacher in one of the most diverse cities in the world,it should be natural to "network in your community and use multicultural resources". But often the pressures of limited time and perceived curriculum constraints means Googling the culture. What wealth of resources I've missed by not including the voice of the community. Yet no outreach will work without a community friendly school. How else could a parent/community member feel safe unless prior experience had been positive and welcoming? Only then could I have authentic input of a community in the classroom. My teaching experience includes diverse school communities where parents did not come to school even for the report interviews as they felt themselves and their culture outside of the mainstream. If I am to access these resources and build the multicultural aspect of my teaching, I have to set out ahead of time to secure the confidence of that community.
I find the concept of connectedness to be a compelling strategy. At my school, we have a very diverse student body yet certain cultural and ethnic groups have very low representation on parent council and rarely attend parent-teacher interviews. Not surprisingly there is also a high failure rate and poor attendance rate for these students. I wonder if these students had more self-awareness and we had more other-awareness whether they would feel more a part of our school. I cant help but think we would engage these students to a much higher degree which in turn, would improve student success. As an administrator I also recognize the need for us as a school system to build on our other-awareness and subsequently our cultural knowledge to better include all of our parents and students.
Jafar Hussain
Mar 28, 2013 at 5:20 PM