Preface to fellow educators: My interest in and advocacy for Global Education is a direct result of a decade studying the Holocaust and how to teach this content to my students. Learning how millions of people were targeted by the Nazi regime in Germany, over a period of time spanning more than a decade, led me to consider the critical role of education. The Nazis were able to pervert their education system to suit their goals of racial supremacy, but education today should be the best possible tool to combat hatred and human rights violations.
I consider myself a strong advocate for Holocaust and Genocide Education as well as Human Rights Education. Over the years, my middle school and/or high school history students have studied about the experiences of young people their own age during the Holocaust through a specially designed unit which also examined treatment of the youngest victims of the Armenian and Rwandan Genocides. Students in my grade 6-12 human rights clubs, the O Ambassadors, have learned about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and met with distinguished guest speakers who have spent time in sub-Saharan Africa, Bosnia and other locations addressing human rights issues. They have also traveled to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and met with survivors of the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide.
I strongly believe that global lessons need not end in the classroom. The Human Rights Library collection we now have in our school library was funded through a grant awarded to me by DonorsChoose.org and allows students and teachers to explore global topics on their own time.
Using this website and its contents:
Through this website and providing in-service professional development opportunities, I hope to inspire my colleagues to bring global lessons to the students in their classes. Working in a highly diverse school district, with students hailing from many nations, global lessons serve to find common ground among each unique constituency. Acknowledging and celebrating diversity naturally leads to a heightened sense of global understanding.
With our instantaneous communication through technology, it is impossible to imagine a future where global connectedness and interaction does not occur. Preparing students for this inevitability is crucial to a better future and can be a very exciting endeavor for both teachers and their students.
What is on this website?
This website is really a "how to" guide to begin teaching globally. It includes tools accessed through the tabs on the left which include:
- instruments for assessing student global competency
- techy tools and links for teachers to incorporate into lessons
- standards-based global lesson exemplars
- information on programs for teachers to participate in global travel and teacher exchanges
- specific information about Teachers for Global Classrooms
- personal travel blog
This is all intended to guide teachers toward implementing global lessons in all content areas.
Note: Each tab and subtab at left are all active and simply need to be tapped to access that section or subsection. Any words that are colored in mauve have hyperlinks. Click on the word and go to the linked site for more information.