Circle of Viewpoints

This perspective-building activity asks students to think about topics from different viewpoints. 

You can use a site like ontheissues.org to compile a list of issues, or brainstorm with students to come up with a list, and then have students roleplay different perspectives on each side of the issues.

Discuss the list, and brainstorm the different perspectives or viewpoints for each item on the list (the different "sides").

Once you have a list of different perspectives and viewpoints:

1. After the brainstorm, ask each student to choose one of these viewpoints. Give them time to prepare to speak about the topic from that perspective and to embody the viewpoint using the script skeleton to structure what he or she says.

2. Pair students up, or have a pair of students at the front of the room (in chairs, to make it less formal), with everyone in class taking a turn cycling through the front of the room.

   • It is important to have the audience engage, so provide everyone with a roster and rubric. The audience evaluates each speaker on benign characteristics, like "completeness of answers" or "proper viewpoint representation."

3. Have students consider each topic, and then they personally and silently select the issue they want to discuss first. 

4. Instruct them to use the following script (while you stay in the Power Zone, monitoring their discussions)

   • • I am thinking of <the topic> from the point of view of <the viewpoint you've chosen>

     • I think <describe the topic from your viewpoint. Be an actor - take on the character of your viewpoint>

     • A question I have from this viewpoint is <ask a question from this viewpoint>

5. Both students discuss the issue, and from the proper viewpoint. They should try to be as genuine and thoughtful as possible, and not reduce the viewpoint to a caricature, satire, or mockery.

This routine can be used at the beginning of a unit of study to help students brainstorm new perspectives about a topic, and imagine different characters, themes and questions connected to it. It can be used after reading a book or chapter. 

Provocative topics and issues are encouraged and the routine also works especially well when students are having a hard time seeing other perspectives or when things seem black and white. The routine can be used to open discussions about dilemmas and other controversial issues. Use current news or an election cycle for inspiration, as well.

• If students need help thinking of different viewpoints, try using the following prompts:

  • • How does it look from different points in space and different points in time?

    • Who (and what) is affected by it?

    • Who is involved?

    • Who might care?

Wrap up/Exit Ticket: What new ideas do you have about the topic that you didn't have before? What new questions do you have?

Modification: Do this activity as a whole class, and have each student in turn say the script; anyone who has the same issue but opposite viewpoint can respond when appropriate. This would be better if you limit the number of issues, and conduct it as a socratic seminar.

Cultural Literacy 

This extended-use activity presents students with different art and music from around the world, and encourages students to remember titles and creators. This will help students investigate the world and understand how to communicate ideas.

1. Look for artwork and music from different parts of the world. Ideally, you can show one piece of art and play one piece of music per week. You could pick from the same place each week, or have music from one part of the world and art from another.

2. Create a slide presentation with the artwork and music embedded within.

3. Show the pieces to your students without names first. Ask them to predict where they think the art and music originated. 

4. Show them the pieces again, this time with names and locations. Encourage students to work on remembering the name and title (you could even include location) for an extra credit quiz at the end of the grading period.

5. Show different pieces each week, then have an extra credit quiz day in the last week of the grading period (before and after school sessions).

The included sample is not country-specific, but the format illustrates the idea in action; it does not feature as much contemporary art and music (having been used in a History class), but the format is easy to duplicate and make current. The quiz form can be adapted to suit your needs.

You can also extend this activity by having students research and suggest artwork and music. You could then pick from the submissions and create your presentation from them.

Playing world music streaming stations during classwork is another way to bring world culture to your classroom. You could do "World Wednesdays" and start class with the Cultural Literacy activity, then have world music playing throughout the day.

Planning a Trip

The point of this activity is to get students thinking internationally, while investigating specifics about other countries. This can be tailored based on content, and can also utilize research skills as they dive deeper into locales and find sites, professions, and cultural events.

1. Inform students that they are going to plan a trip for you. Ask them where in the world they would travel if they could. Encourage out-of-the-box thinking. Maybe even say it has to be someplace NOT in North America. If you want to get content-specific, have them take you places that you are currently interacting with:

   • ELA: they can take you to the setting of a story or essay; they can have you follow a path from the hometown of famous writer to the next hometown of another; they can write a paragraph per stop and explain why they chose the site; they can create a character and have that person travel in your place. Discuss opportunities in your PLC--the possibilities are limitless!

   • Math: you can have them take you to different mathematician's home countries, OR they can find ways to justify, with equations or theorems, particular destinations. You could even give them maps and have them plot specific equations resulting in graphs or geometric shapes, and they have to find the places nearest foci or intersections, or within a geometric shape on the map; as a PLC, you could develop equations (or QR clues) that lead students to specific locations in a Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego way using GPS coordinates.

   • Science: they can take you to the home country of the most recent scientist whose work you've used (or they can find a Nobel Prize winner and take you to that person's home country--or multiple winners and countries); they can identify a certain number of major scientific achievements or discoveries (engineering, physics, inventions, discoveries) and have you travel to that place to learn more about the achievement, and on to another to learn about it, and so on; as a PLC, decide what the focus of the tour should be, and tailor the instructions to that (aquatic science can visit the most famous reefs and surrounding locations, biology can take you to various hotspots of pandemics, anatomy can take you--à la the movie Inner Space--around the human body, physics can take you to famous bridges and buildings that seem to defy gravity, and so on).

   • Social Studies: In history classes, students can take you on a historical tour rather than a modern trip. They can pick a set number of stops, and tell you what you will see there, why it's significant, and why they picked it as a stop for you; in Geography classes, students can take you on a global tour, but the focus can be on the culture of the place as they explain what you will see and how it's different from their own experiences. Government can take you on a trip to different government styles, and explain how the government functions in the daily life of the citizens; economics can give you a statistical sampling based on income and GDP to show you a cross-section of humanity from the wealthiest to the poorest in the world.

2. Once each student has a tour in mind, have them use iPads, Chromebooks, or mobile devices to research basics about the trip. Major cities, historic sites, holidays/celebrations/events, culinary uniqueness, and so on. 

3. Next, have them dive deeper, and tailor their research based on your content. They should provide justification for why they have you going to that place, as well as what you'll see and experience there. They should also provide rationale for how it fits the content.

4. Lastly, they should use Internet resources to find pictures of the place, people, and sights. They can create a Google Doc or presentation, or use canva.com to create a booklet/brochure, or whatever is your preferred method of delivery.

The goal is to get students to think about the world beyond the classroom in meaningful ways, and connecting it to content they're studying or reviewing is a great way to personalize the learning while investigating the world, introducing multiple perspectives, and communicating ideas.

   5. Once the activity has run its course, have students showcase their work by standing and sharing. The class as a whole can select the top entries for a hall of fame.

Adaptation: Students can create their entries using the attached template. This can be done by individual students for ONE concept each.

Accommodation: Intentionally group students, first, to ensure equitable distribution of abilities. Place students based on their skills and maturity, so that lower-level will be with higher-level students. Assist in the Power Zone as you're needed.

Modification: Make it a rapid-fire competition, where you project the content onto the board, and students have to quickly (in teams) sketch and title it with a superlative. The first (or funniest, or best, etc) gets a point. Winning team gets to dig into a prize bucket (pencils, stickers, trinkets, etc)

Invisible Backpack

This activity is designed to help students understand diverse perspectives and experiences. It's not specifically a "global" activity, but is aimed more at enabling individuals to better recognize the struggles and strengths that other people have. This is part of the Four Domains of Global Competence: Recognize perspectives. Consider it an "exercise in empathy."

Prepare for the activity by making copies of the attached blank backpack.

1. Explain that everyone has things that we carry which weigh us down and make our lives a little tougher. This could be familial, physical/medical, emotional, intellectual, or something else. Some people are born with the weight, some make choices which result in burdens.

2. Describe it as if everyone has an invisible backpack they are born with, and those weights and burdens fill the pack.  They should think of them like big and small rocks. 

3. Say, "We often have weight that we chose, but sometimes people throw 'rocks' at us--in the many ways people hurt each other emotionally or physically--and those rocks end up in our backpack."

4. Ask students to consider THREE things that they think make their life uniquely more difficult. It might be a learning disability, or a medical issue, or a family problem--whatever makes their daily life privately tougher.

5. Instruct them to be as general and anonymous as possible and write the three things on the backpack handout.

6. When everyone is done, have everyone crumple the page.

7. Students then stand up. On the count of three, tell students to have a snowball fight by throwing the papers around the room. Throw, pick one up, throw it, pick one up, throw it. They are "throwing rocks" at each other 😉

8. When you tell them to stop (maybe 10-15 seconds), everyone should pick up a paper and read it silently.

9. Ask for 4-5 people to share ONE thing from the paper they have. Ask everyone else to raise their hands if the paper they have has the same thing (or similar).

10. Once you've had several share, students throw them around the room again and repeat the process.

11. After 3-4 rounds of this, students should clean up and sit down. Make this a challenge: they have 30 seconds to get EVERY piece of paper picked up and put in the trash can (offer this in case they're worried that the recycle bin might not be so anonymous/secure), AND return to their seats. Incentivize this with prizes for the class, with all-or-none getting the prize.

12. Discuss what they noticed or learned from this experience.

The goal of this activity is to get students to understand, first, that everyone is carrying weight, and our task should be (at a minimum) to not add to the weight with the things we say and do to others. Secondly, we all have more in common than we might have thought; we aren't alone in our struggles. The point in having everyone work to clean quickly is to show that we can all help each other. We might not be able to remove the weight from the backpack, but we can look for ways to help others carry their weight (illustrated by the loop on top of the backpack). Lastly, students can connect this to the larger world by realizing that the backpack they carry is not just similar to the people in the classroom, but to people all over the place. 

You can extend this by having them brainstorm what sort of burdens people might carry in their backpacks in other parts of the world. Have them research specific places (in pairs or groups) and create a decorated backpack with the issues faced by people in that place. Follow that up by having them discuss or research ways that they could help ease the burden for those people.

"The Danger of a Single Story"

This idea is based off the TED Talk of the same name, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The purpose is to have students reflect on what stories they believe about other people, and consider what story might be told about them.

1. Start by asking students to consider what the "Outside World" might think about them as a generation. Discuss.

2. Next, ask them what they think of the "Outside World." Discuss.

3. Have them individually write what story they think people might say about them just based on the exterior. It can be just a few sentences for a few minutes.

4. Then, have them write the story that people don't see, who they really are.

5. Finally, compose a handout with the following questions:

   1. What is the first single story the speaker talked about?

   2. What is the second single story?

   3. What was the third single story?

   4. What is a quote that stands out to you?

   5. What was Ms. Adichie's message and purpose in giving that talk?

6. Show the TED Talk, pausing as needed to discuss the student's questions and observations. 

7. Ask students what they think about their own "single story" now, and what they think about the single story they have of others. Encourage discussion to reflect on how their perspectives might have changed as a result of this TED Talk.

This could take from 25-45 minutes, depending on how you pace it.

YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/D9Ihs241zeg 

The 3 Ys

This week's suggestion is to get students to investigate a world issue and try to connect it to their lives in some meaningful way. It's very easy to say "XYZ is a problem...someone should do something!" from afar. 

Part of global competence involves understanding perspectives, and we can work to help students see that international issues are important to them, just like the local and personal issues are.

Start by having students watch CNN10 and completing one of these activities; ask them to identify ONE global issue covered in the day's report.  You can also have a class discussion instead, wherein you all talk about global issues and write a list on the board.

Once they have a global issue in mind, pose the following questions to them. Encourage them to first write a response, then pair-share the issues and answers they came up with. Ask for several volunteers to share their responses to each:

• Why might this [topic, question] matter to me?

• Why might it matter to people around me [family, friends, city, nation]?

• Why might it matter to the world?

Discuss these questions individually, and encourage cross-talk in the class. Guide them to an understanding that lack of clean water in a less developed country is just like Flint, Michigan, which is just like a family down the street that can't pay their bills (for example). 

This strategy can also be used for everyday content acquisition. Start or end a unit of study by asking students to consider these questions about the content. 

Why is the study of exponents important to you? 

Why does the study water and watersheds matter to people around you? 

Why does the voting process matter to the world?"

This activity encourages challenging the student perspectives with questions to have them consider the advantages and disadvantages other people experience.

1. Share the following two statements with your students (projector or class set handout):

   • Computers, cell phones, and other technology make life easier and foster communication worldwide.

   • Computers, cell phones, and other technology make for a more demanding lifestyle and for fewer human interactions.

2.  After giving students time to consider the two statements, discuss the merits of each as a class. Have students argue the truth and inaccuracy of each statement.

3. Ask for the class to create a working definition of "modern" and "globalized." 

4. Lead a discussion about the nature of a modern, globalized society, and ask students how people in other countries (teenagers, especially) might be able to compete in the global market if they lack computers, cell phones, and other technology. Ask how they think a lack of access to technology in their  daily lives would impact them. 

   • Follow up with asking how your students would be impacted if they didn't have access to such technology. Have them discuss what would be different in their daily lives.

5. Next, discuss the ways in which people in other countries might be better off with a lack of technology. Discuss what sort of problems people in developing countries might face as a result of being more rural or less developed, and also what skills they have versus urbanized/developed countries. Discuss how prepared you and your students might be if presented with the problems developing countries face and solve.

6. Now, show the following video, and discuss how someone in the USA who makes $60,000 lives compared to the man in the video (you can provide a list of jobs that make $60k in the USA). Discuss why they think there is a difference in lifestyle and perceptions. The link also includes teacher resources to further explore this topic. https://klrn.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/wa08.socst.world.glob.newworker/new-worker-class/

7. For the exit ticket, ask the question, "What responsibilities do more developed countries have to less developed countries?"

Step In, Step Out, Step Back

Have students pair up. Prepare the class by telling them you will be doing a short 3R activity (as seen in previous Educating for Global Competence tips). 

Ask them each to describe a ritual that they feel is unique to their families, explain a relationship that is important to them, and discuss a restriction they have in their lives.

Next, ask them to predict how their partner might feel about a given situation (a wildfire threatens your neighborhood, the city water supply is toxic, a hurricane has caused flooding for your area). Use the following format:

Step In: Given what you see and know at this time, what do you think your partner might feel, believe, know, or experience because of the situation?

Step out: What else would you like or need to learn to understand this person’s perspective better?

Step back: Given your exploration of this perspective so far, what do you notice about your own perspective and what it takes to understand somebody else’s?

Next, show an image or short clip of someone in another country (preferably very different setting from that of your students).

Have the partners repeat the process, trying to understand what life is like for the subject of the image/clip. Show a contrasting image/clip of someone from our own country and ask if students can see any similarities between the two, and between their own lives and those of the people in the images. 

Finally, show someone extravagantly wealthy from the United States and a teenager in another country, and ask which of the lives are most similar to the student's own. Encourage discussion about what ways we are more similar with people in different places than with some people in different zip codes.

The closing activity could be a prompt like, "Describe what us and them means, and explain how much you think those concepts play a role in your life."

Critical Thinking Activity:

Circles of Action

Instruction idea: hand out playing cards as they enter, then randomly draw two cards to select a suit and face value; use these to pick "volunteers" to share thoughts. Once you've done this once, you can give them a few seconds to trade cards if they want to, "to help their odds."

Have students draw three circles on a blank piece of paper, one inside the other. Ask them to think about what it means to "serve others." Discuss their thoughts.

Next, ask them to write ideas in the first circle answering the question, "What can I do to contribute to my inner circle (friends, family, the people I know)?" (1-2 minutes)

In the next circle, have them write ideas answering the question, "What can I do to contribute to my community (my school, my neighborhood, my religious group)?" (1-2 minutes)

Finally, have them answer, "What can I do to contribute to the world (beyond my immediate environment)?" (1-2 minutes)

Encourage them to pair-and-and-share their ideas, and give feedback to strengthen the ideas. (2 minutes)

Next, have them each write their "World" ideas on the board, and--as a class--identify the most common answers. List those separately. Then, pick one topic/idea (perhaps the one that occurred the most) that could be explored further and discuss why they think so many people shared that idea. This can be revisited later as a class research project, writing task, or problem-solving exercise.

To close, challenge them to finish this sentence and turn it in as an exit ticket: It's important to look for ways to contribute to the community and the world, because...

You can also tie the whole activity back to the intro, if you used playing cards to nominate speakers; help them understand that sometimes life for people is simply "luck of the draw," and if they have the chance to help someone else, they should. 

The 3 R's

Encourage students to reflect on the different rituals, relationships, and restrictions they have in their lives. Provide a chart of those three aspects of life and a prompt for each (e.g. "What is a ritual your family does for birthdays?" "What relationships do you have at home?" "In what ways are you restricted as a 14 / 15 / 16 year old?") 

Each student then spends 3-4 minutes completing their chart. Next, have students pair-share with at least three classmates and notate their similarities and differences. Finally, ask them to write a 3-5 sentence summary of their discussions, and to reflect on what they learned. You might also have them consider how they think someone in a less-developed country (compared to the USA) and a developing country might answer the questions; this can be extended as a research & writing task.

Watch Taiye Selasi's TED Talk on this topic.