Fulbright Teacher for Global Classrooms Reflections on my Fellowship

Margaret “Peggy” Cleary 12/15/2022

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." - Lao Tzu

Global Education focuses on developing competencies, attitudes and values that enable students to work together across cultural differences, to bring about change and take control of their lives and futures. The good news is incorporating global perspectives into the classroom does not entail additional paperwork! A change of mindset, a pivot, is all that is necessary to connect students with their future and the world.

The terms global education, global citizenship and global competence hold greater meaning for me after completing my Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms Fellowship. Before embarking on this fellowship opportunity these terms seemed vague and all blended together. Now they denote distinct characteristics defining the skills and attributes necessary for a person to thrive in our 21 century culture.

The Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms program has guided me in incorporating a global focus into my classroom and in discussions with my fellow teachers in my county and state. When teaching my Visual Arts students I have noticed a defined pivot when selecting topics and content for my classes. A wider lens came about with ease when I began to apply a global lens to my planning, teaching and student learning. While I was already aware of the eurocentric slant of most art history resources in circulation, I now use the knowledge and resources obtained through the FTGC to broaden the context of my teaching with greater awareness and urgency to expand the singular view of history to include a multiplicity of views and perspectives. In my teaching I draw resources from global cultures, past and present to introduce the national and state content standards for the Visual Arts with my students. On a state level I participated in the development and selection of artworks to be included in the rehanging of the North Carolina Museum of Art’s collection for long term exhibition and educational resource development. (2021). This opportunity allowed me to infuse a global perspective in the selection of artworks to be displayed and create a dialogue with teachers and curators from around our state.

I am interested in exploring global pathways through art for cross-cultural understanding. Finding and developing strategies and research tools to help students investigate the world, recognize perspectives and communicate and understand ideas through the visual arts. An essential question of my investigations is :

How do natural regional resources, materials, and local cultural knowledge support the methods and techniques artists use in the design and construction of art & artifacts?

A simple example of how a global education mindset affects classroom lesson planning and discussions is exemplified in the second grade printmaking lesson I created. The subject matter of the artwork is the poinsettia introduced to the students through the Mexican legend of Pepita and the Poinsettia. We discuss the origins of the poinsettia from Mexico, Mexico's climate, why the poinsettia grows well in Mexico and Mexico's location on the world map. We learn that Mexico exports the plant and America imports the plant. We talked about printmaking and production; how an artist/producer can make many beautiful objects quickly with printmaking techniques. We discussed the entrepreneurship value of using our printmaking skills to create a small business perhaps producing placemats and tablecloths for sale during the holidays. I was pleased to have shared this multilayered project based lesson with my students which investigated the significance of the poinsettia flower in a global context with beautiful artwork as a reminder of the interconnections of stories, cultures and people.

An idea I am continuing to pursue at my school is to build upon the Cultural Event Night and country research projects my fellow teachers and I have worked collectively as a school to produce. I continually share with my colleagues the resources I have learned about from the FTGC fellowship. I have shared grade appropriate global fictional literature matched to the country the students investigated in with their classroom teachers. These global stories allow for the students to see themselves in others and to identify with people/children from around the world. I continue to build on the country's resources available to our students. I have researched and developed art lesson plans based on regional cultures and art styles. Students learn the values and beliefs of cultures other than their own through the artwork and objects they examine in class to use as inspiration for their own project based art creations. This year (2022) I wrote and was awarded a grant to develop the school library global art resources. Expanding student access to global art and literature resources which will exponentially expand a student’s worldview.

The collection of professional global resources, agencies and contacts curated during my FTGC experience are extensive and of high quality. The value of these resources are being realized weekly as I integrate them into my curriculum development and planning. The Tedx presentation “The Dangers of A Single Story” is clear, concise and resonated with me as the community in which I live is often guilty of such narrow sighted focus. Fernando Remiers, from The Ford Foundation and a Harvard professor is brilliant in his overview of the educational system we are operating with now. I admire his motivational and innovative approach to address the future of education on a global level.

The way in which I view myself as an educator has changed through my experiences with the FTGC and International Research Exchange. I have always felt comfortable being the lone catalyst of change in my visual art classroom. I am now compelled to bring changes and global education views beyond my classroom door and to my fellow teachers and school community. I continue to be inspired by my FTGC fellow cohorts knowledge, skills and abilities. I enjoyed the passion for education and the dialogue and information we share freely with each other. I particularly liked working on the Spotlight Challenge group project as we collectively put our best ideas into play. I enjoyed diving in head first, selecting a resource and designing a lesson plan around the resource. The resources identified for the Spotlight Challenges were very accessible and inspired creative, robust lesson plans.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals resource discovered during my FTGC experience led me to investigate pathways or units of learning related to global issues and provide access to a clear collective framework to draw from. The United Nations have developed an umbrella from which global issues can be investigated and positive actions taken. Through learning about and implementing the UN SDG in my classroom a larger picture came into view. All of the global government organizations, NGO’s, scientists, filmmakers, content creators who initially I thought of as separate entities working on a wide variety of issues seem to all tie back to the UN SDG goals! Discovering this framework was enlightening for me.

I am honored to be a Fulbright Teacher for Global Classrooms Fellow. This fellowship has provided me affirmation for the self directed research and work I have done and continue to do. It's encouraging to know that there are others FTGC in this world with similar passion and interests. Important interpersonal connections were forged with my fellow teachers at the seminar held in Washington DC. Through the use of social media these connections remain updated. It was an important event in which we strengthened our ties with each other as we continued in our Fulbright transformative journey.

For the final component of my Fulbright Fellowship I was selected to travel with a cohort of teachers to the Republic of India. I looked forward to exploring my essential driving question within India's vast borders. The diversity of climates, crafts, art and artifacts had many stories to reveal. Alas the global pandemic posed a problem for travel in the Summer of 2020 and the Fulbright Organization wisely put the field experience travel component on hold. I was then generously offered the opportunity to travel to Germany in the summer of 2022 or Finland in November. Regretfully due to unforeseen issues I was not able to travel during either of those times. As an alternative Fulbright graciously connected me with Sandra Moreno Medina, a teacher in Bucaramanga East Colombia who I forged a relationship with through email. Ms. Medina educated students in grade 9-12 in the subjects of History, Global Perspectives and Literature. Not being able to travel allowed me the opportunity to focus on my local culture and community and create a slide presentation about our state and town to share with Sandra Media and her students. A global / local approach was applied to share across continents employing 21 century technology, Google slides and Zoom live meeting software. Our virtual meeting is Wednesday and I can’t wait to discover more about Ms. Medina, her students and program at the private Cambridge school Aspaen Cantillanain in Bucaramanga, East Colombia.

The live zoom video meeting was held on Wednesday with Ms. Medina and two of her freshman students who were both 14 years old. My 1st grade class was excited to meet students from so far away on the continent of South America. Our students exchanged greetings in English and in Spanish. My first graders asked the Colombian girls a series of questions and learned about their home and school life in Colombian. One of my students surprised me and asked to share a dance! I adjusted the camera and John danced a strange dance I was not familiar with. He then asked the Colombian girls if they knew what dance it was. To my surprise they did. “It is the Wendy Dance” they said without hesitation. Wow ! Who knew that a dance taken from a virtual game character had such global appeal to young people. We all sang We Wish You a Merry Christmas song together. Then Ms. Medina shared a movie narrated by a young child in English about Colombia and the dream all Colombians have in their hearts to live life joyfully. All in all this was an excellent introduction to global cultural understanding for my young students. I believe that Ms. Medinas students , who both would like to be doctors , enjoyed getting to know a bit about the state of North Carolina and our town through the slide presentation I shared and the live video call. I invited them to visit anytime and reminded them that I included information on the many universities our state has to select from. Ms. Medina and I both agreed to meet again virtually and perhaps have the students share dances from our cultures.

THAILAND

Exploring the Diverse Culture and History of Thailand- Fulbright -Hays Seminar Abroad 2017

National Geographic Expedition Experts- Travel expeditions with Nat Geo experts.

GEEO Travel Educational group travel discounted to be interesting and affordable for teachers

US State Dept. Of Education and Cultural Affairs - Fulbright-Hays-Program

Wikivoyage - offers travel articles, covering destinations around the world. There are numerous ways to browse the site including easy to use interactive global map.

Culture Trip - created for the curious traveler; this guide offers insight to interesting and country specific cultural sights, folklore and histories to be discovered. A place to start your inquiry and plan an itinerary.

Stories & Objects - Stories of travel and people told through the objects they create. Art Ethnography . https://www.storiesandobjects.com/