Learning from the Global Voices of Our Students

Abstract

Our world is shrinking in terms of the real distances among people. We can see and talk with each other instantly and people move between countries on a daily basis. It is common to have students in public schools speak fifty or more languages. Schools, teachers, students, and parents have to work together to develop effective pedagogical and social strategies for new international students and native students. How we decide to work with all of our students in schools affects students in their everyday lives both inside and outside of school. In schools adults create rules and make decisions based on what we think is best for students. Professional educators have the best of intentions for their students and believe that what we do increases the quality of education and life for our students and believe that what we do increases the quality of education and life for our students. Most of the time though we forget to get input from one group of experts who understand what life is like as a new international students for whom the native language is different from their languages. This group of experts of course consists of the students who actually live through the experiences of being new students who do not or barely understand the native language of their schools.We decided to ask a group of international students what they believe would be the most helpful for them. These students and their advisor visited our small liberal arts college and talked with our admissions people, our Associate Dean of Education and visited classes to talk with pre service teachers. The advisor and one of the students also visited seven classes of teachers during a summer institute. These experts in the real life field of education (the international students) eloquently explained to all of us what they believe we should know about teaching students like them. Their voices were articulate, authentic, passionate and engaging. We learned much more in a few meetings with these young people than we have learned in years of professional development. Our conclusion is that the voices of this group of experts must be heard in schools in every nation. This article is an attempt to allow people to think more about the expertness of our students and to develop processes to gain from the expertise.