Focus on Global Education: A Report from the 2007 PDK Summit

Abstract

THERESA Tarlos, a professor of geography at Orange Coast College in Southern California, teaches her students a foreign language at the same time she teaches them geography. Tarlos, who was educated in Europe and the U.S., is fluent in five languages. Every time she presents a new term to her students, she incorporates the German word for She also assigns panels of eight to 10 students to research how geography is taught in other countries, such as Argentina, France, and Thailand. And every two years, she takes a group of American students abroad for summer school in Europe to cities such as Rome, Florence, and Paris. This is my contribution to global education, Tarlos said. Nancy Kaplan, an English teacher at International School in Staten Island, New York, works with her students to publish an international newspaper that is written by students around the world. Any time meet anybody from another country, that's how build my international reporter base, Kaplan said. just have to keep the connections going. You put it in the hands of the students. They know how to connect with technology, and think the teacher's job is just to help them focus that connection and continue it. These were just two examples of global education that were shared during the panel discussion that kicked off the 2007 PDK Summit on Global Education in Vancouver, British Columbia, on October 18. This wasn't about a panel and an audience, said panelist Vivien Stewart, the Asia Society's vice president of education. This was about a group. The people in the audience have as many good ideas as the people on the panel. Lloyd Axworthy, president of the University of Winnipeg and past director of the Liu Center for the Study of Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, agreed. Axworthy moderated the discussion among five global education experts and accepted questions and comments from the audience. There's an opportunity for your organization to actually do a real inventory of best practices, Axworthy told the Kappans in the audience. Just the sheer sharing of it could add an enormous amount of real fiber to what could be done. What I'm hearing, very briefly, is that there are a lot of pretty interesting, exciting things going on, not only what our panel is proposing, but also what you yourself are involved in. Stewart agreed, noting that the conversation about global education has evolved. I think the question has changed from whether we should teach about the world to how to teach about the world, given everything else that we have to do, she said. Panelist Karen Kodama, an international education administrator at the Seattle Public Schools, was until recently the principal of John Stanford International School, a K-5 bilingual immersion public school in Seattle. She found room for global issues in the curriculum by superimposing a global perspective on other subjects. There's not enough time in the day to teach everything you think you need to teach, Kodama said. really need to prioritize to see how you can begin to integrate. wanted to teach a world language. don't have enough time in the day to add another subject, so why can't you just overlay it on top of subjects? At John Stanford, that's exactly what they did. Students began to spend half their day studying math, science, culture, and literacy in their chosen world language, either Japanese or Spanish. Parents and community leaders liked the approach and asked why international education wasn't available in other parts of the city and to students from kindergarten to 12th grade. Now, Kodama is looking at ways for the district to expand its international education program to make those things happen. We wouldn't have to call it international education if we had this type of education for all our children, because aren't we all just preparing our children to be successful, not only in college and work but for the world? …