Tips for Teaching Grade School Students How to Make Global Impact (Transcript)

Nicole: So, we’re getting to the end of our festivals of light unit.

In this project, the students explore different cultures and world religions.

All of you have chosen a festival to learn about, to research. And now that we’re getting to the end of this unit, we’re going to do a little bit of reflection.

All along, we do talk about things, but I don’t necessarily say why exactly we’re doing this because I want it to come together for them.

And so, your question to think about in your journal is why do you think we are learning about different festivals of light and people of different religious backgrounds?

For me, teaching tolerance with kids is really important and building empathy along the way… yeah, it’s part of being a global citizen and how might that affect the decisions we make.

If you’re done, can you share with us why do you think it’s important to learn about different cultures, different religions and things like that?

Student: I think we’re learning about different festivals of light and different religious backgrounds because if we ever met somebody of that religion, not only do you know some of their religions, you would also know a little about that somebody.

Nicole: Okay so, when you have interactions with people, you’ll be able to know more about them and be more comfortable.

Student: I think that it might be because if you go to a different country, you don’t know what will might offend them or something.

Nicole: Right, that’s… you guys are getting really close. You’re really figuring this out. We talked about this a little bit the other day, about this phrase. I want to see if you remember this, that it was global competence. Can you say that?

All: Global competence.

Nicole: Like any kind of vocabulary, if they have the experience, the point of reference, then they’re able to make that connection. Because they’ve been in a school that’s really emphasizing global competence…

What it means to be globally aware, aware of what’s happening in the world…

When we worked on defining it and putting terminology to it, they made the connection right away. A globally competent person is something that’s very important, but taking action is a piece of that, is how do you go out and help other people be globally competent.

And so, now it’s our time in this unit to take action. And the way that you are going to take action is through your presentations. You are doing PowerPoint presentations to teach others.

They present their festivals of light. And they compare and contrast it to their own culture and whatever they celebrate. We take action by teaching others. We have a certain knowledge. And now it’s our responsibility to go out and share that with other people so that they can be exposed to the things that we’ve learned about.

Schools That Work

John Stanford International School