Sage Advice: Grooming Good Global Citizens
How do you prepare your students to be citizens of the world?
First, you help them define the term "citizen of the world." Then you help them learn what being a good citizen means -- to themselves, to loved ones and family, to the school community, to the surrounding community. One's actions can be directly linked to one's values (beliefs, feelings, and actions that are important to us), so starting with a basic understanding of one's values is essential to any meaningful discussions on citizenship. The global context is meaningless unless students are good citizens in their own nation.
Montgomery Granger
District administrator for operations
Comsewogue School District
Port Jefferson Station, New York
Good citizens need to work, vote, and take care of themselves financially. I prepare them by teaching business life skills, including personal finance, communication, insurance, and computer skills.
Rebecca LaBarca
Business teacher
East Meadow High School
East Meadow, New York
Begin by getting our students to learn what it is to be a citizen of a school community, a family, and their own classrooms.
Lydia Bellino
Principal
Goosehill Primary School
Cold Spring Harbor, New York
Prepare students to be citizens of the world by being one yourself. Teach from a global perspective.
Jill Goldesberry
Program officer, community partnerships
Stanley Foundation
Muscatine, Iowa
Teach them to read, encourage them to read, read to them, ask them to read aloud, read them the newspaper, and have them read the newspaper.
Bob Kostka
Social studies coordinator
Bridgewater-Raynham Regional School District
Bridgewater, Massachusetts
Simple: Teach them the Boy Scout motto and slogan! Scout motto: Be prepared. Scout slogan: Do a good turn daily.
William Stone
Senior innovative-program specialist
New York City Department of Education
New York, New York
Becoming a world citizen requires knowledge and experience of other cultures; U.S. schools do not provide knowledge or experience. Rather, they provide a cursory glimpse of others in order to exemplify how not to be American. "Diversity Day" does not create world citizens, it patronizes cultural difference and touts xenophobia, and always winds up pandering to American culture as Eurocentrically defined. Only travel and immersion in other cultures creates world citizens.
William Herbert Smith
Yang En University
Quanzhou, China
Right before our eyes, all that the education sector has controlled, dismissed, manipulated, validated, embellished, fictionalized, and ranked within an aura of tradition and ritual may be accessed by point-and-click. We need to stop chasing exponentially expanding content. Inquiry, problem recognition and solution, creativity, knowing one's strengths and weaknesses, communication, and relationships are what students must be prepared for.
Vincent Hawkins
Director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment
Springfield School District
Springfield, Vermont
All students must have an understanding of physics to better understand the environmental, political, historical, and cultural issues that surround energy use and supply and define our twenty-first-century society.
Be a role model
Submitted by Chad (not verified) on March 26, 2008 - 20:16.
I think the greatest way to teach is by example. In the high school arena, discussing a trait can easily escape the ears of an uninterested student but to lead by example is sometimes harder to ignore. Our relationships with our students are key just like the relationships between a child and parent. If they see no one in their lives being a good citizen then why would they think that it is important to become one themselves.
Teaching character education
Submitted by Sarah Eylands (not verified) on March 11, 2008 - 11:21.
It is important that we as educators are teaching our students good character traits. Learning how to be a responsible, respectful, and caring person is a very important lesson that prepares them for real-life. I do this by studying one character trait a month and focusing on why it is useful and important to have.
growing global citizens
Submitted by Kathryn Desmond (not verified) on January 28, 2008 - 17:10.
How do you prepare your students to be citizens of the world?
My students become global citizens at our international studies magnet elementary school by learning in an environment where they can gain an understanding of what it means to be an international student; working with students of many ethnicities, faiths, and beliefs. This teaching / learning concept is developed within the "IB" philosophy that, at the elementary level, encompasses student service learning, cooperative learning activities, and a worldwide view of themselves, their community, our country and the world as interrelated pieces of a whole. In today's world, it is important our students learn how to seek out information and guide themselves to learn new skills because they will create their own future as a global student and citizen. We offer them the social, technological and educational skills to be successful as tomorrow's global leaders.
Grooming Good Global Citizens
Submitted by Colleen Thompson (not verified) on January 24, 2008 - 16:56.
I teach my kindergartners to use the resources they possess to make their families, school, community and world a better place. Their desire, confidence and creativity continue to grow as they discover new ways to use their talents for the betterment of others. Their World Changer program is impacting our school and communicating a different outlook to a sometimes self-centered generation.
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