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I think that it would be a Great Idea to use Read Alouds to encourage international mindedness. I think it will be a long term strategy where the whole school needs to get on board. 

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I think that it would be a Great Idea to use Read Alouds to encourage international mindedness. I think it will be a long term strategy where the whole school needs to get on board. 

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In fostering global awareness, schools need to create opportunities for students to explore their role and their understanding of global issues outside the classroom context. This can happen in the form of trips within the host city or country and internationally, as well as through targeted and relevant extra-curricular offerings that promote leadership and an international consciousness. Student and teacher exchange programs would also be good to explore.
This is a whole school initiative. Collaborating with the school's community (like staff, parents and students) would encourage feedback and interests of what could be considered. Creating policies for field trips and extra-curricular offerings would be embedded within the school's offerings. This would be a long term strategy with reflections to enhance or review at the end of each term. This can determine whether the strategy is working.

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In order to create an international mindedness community of students, I would use the suggestion by Alicia. Alicia said she has guest speakers come to talk with the students and integrates field trips into the curriculum to give the students experiences. I would do this and make it my own by allowing parents to suggest ideas that go along with their culture, for example, visiting a mosque in our town of Augsburg for students to understand the different religions and values that are within our school. Having parents come in to have an "International Day" and set up tables to teach about their culture in different ways would also by able to go along with the guest speakers portion of this plan.

I would work with my administration team, the other lower school teachers, the students, and the parent community to make this plan work. I believe these ideas could become traditions at the school and some of these events could potentially happen yearly. Therefore, being more of a long term plan. I think that by incorporating into the various parts of the PYP curriculum and it's themes in the lower school, it will be easy to see if it is working simply through discussions and interactions in the classroom.

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ADEMOLA ALESHINLOYE                In order to foster international   mindedness,suggestions from students of different continents will be implemented during students council activities. This will give students the opportunity to be globally minded, embrace and exhibit international mindedness in their day to day activities. In planning for a subject like P.E,as the students come for the lesson,you can ask them to greet and introduce each other using their own language or mother tongue to foster international mindedness. For warm up,the teacher can ask the students to tell what  some P.E activities are called in their language and also identify some of the sports materials like,cones, hula hoop, trampoline and  football  using their language.   

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ADEMOLA ALESHINLOYE                In order to foster international   mindedness,suggestions from students of different continents will be implemented during students council activities. This will give students the opportunity to be globally minded, embrace and exhibit international mindedness in their day to day activities. In planning for a subject like P.E,as the students come for the lesson,you can ask them to greet and introduce each other using their own language or mother tongue to foster international mindedness. For warm up,the teacher can ask the students to tell what  some P.E activities are called in their language and also identify some of the sports materials like,cones, hula hoop, trampoline and  football  using their language.   

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My school (Podar-ORT International school) is located in Mumbai, India. One great thing about the city of Mumbai is that it is a melting pot of cultures in the true sense of the word. Our student body is an extention of that diversity and the best way to cultivate international-mindedness among my kids will be to tap into their rich and varied cultural backgrounds.

Below is a plan:
1. Turn by turn, every child will do a show and tell of his or her culture - the languages they speak at home, foods they eat, festivals they celebrate, places they worship at if any, and talk a little bit about where their families originate from. This is to be supplemented with lots of pictures and getting one dish from home that is native to their culture so all the kids get a real taste of it. This can be spread across 4 weeks
2. Once all the kids have had a turn, the kids can do a project of compare and contrast - their culture vs any other.
3. In the library class, we can read books that illustrate how people in different parts of the world live.
4. In visual arts, music and dance, local, national and global artforms can be explored.
5. In language class, the kids are already studying Hindi and French and can watch videos and read books focused on diversity within cultures.

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Bianca Wagner - KINDER UOI COLLABORATION

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Bianca Wagner - KINDER UOI COLLABORATION

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Amber Robinson - In our school now, once a year we hold a festival, where the entire school is involved in learning all about different countries on a given continent. For weeks, kids are exposed to geography, literature, food, family members, language, music, and other arts from the given country or continent. The kids guide the learning throughout the process, and it become the highlight of the year. This is the only time our school makes "room" for such an opportunity, and so in my school, I would love to take this idea and run with it on a much bigger scale. Our staff and students already love the process, so collaborating and extending with them would be easy. Perhaps implementing a plan where the year begins with a unit of inquiry on "ourselves", and eventually extends into more global contexts. I would be interested to see how more impactful and meaningful the learning would be once the children are more equipped to carry a good understanding of themselves into a more global understanding. 

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Amber Robinson - In our school now, once a year we hold a festival, where the entire school is involved in learning all about different countries on a given continent. For weeks, kids are exposed to geography, literature, food, family members, language, music, and other arts from the given country or continent. The kids guide the learning throughout the process, and it become the highlight of the year. This is the only time our school makes "room" for such an opportunity, and so in my school, I would love to take this idea and run with it on a much bigger scale. Our staff and students already love the process, so collaborating and extending with them would be easy. Perhaps implementing a plan where the year begins with a unit of inquiry on "ourselves", and eventually extends into more global contexts. I would be interested to see how more impactful and meaningful the learning would be once the children are more equipped to carry a good understanding of themselves into a more global understanding. 

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Here is my plan:

Place a large map inside of my classroom where learns can place a sticker of where they have lived or visited outside of our current country.
Open the floor for each of them to share a different time about their experience and how is it different from where they live now. I would invite them to bring in family members to share stories.
At the end of this learning experience, i think it would be great to invite families to bring a dish that represents their culture. They can list the ingredients of the dish and based on that, learners can guess which country it is from (they would have the knowledge from previous presentations).
This plan can be repeated or even enhanced every school year based on the learners in the class and the grade level the less would be for.
Mostly important would be have a reflective conversation after everything. What did you learn? Is there a country you would now like to visit or a language that sparks interest? How can we make our friends from different cultures background feel at home in this space?

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International Mindfulness - Angela Dent

1. Novel studies that include diversity and cultural challenges.
2.  Cultural research about one's own cultural and learning more about where we really come from. Kids are always. surprised!  then, share these with one another.
3. Celebrate a holiday each month from another cultural and include art and music.
4. Postcard exchanges with other countries.
5. Zoom Meeting with a class from another part of the world and share the day in the life of a student with one another.
6. Host a day at school with kids from another culture.

Can you make this change alone?

Although teachers are an important part of a child’s learning, this needs to be a collaborative effort with families and other educators.

Who might you need to collaborate with?

Collaboration should include families, music, art, and history teachers, as well as librarians to support research and how to find sources. If possible, educators should invite people of other cultures to the classroom to share their cultures, customs, and traditions. Other schools and community members that represent other cultures.

Is this a short-term strategy or a long-term strategy?

The project I mentioned begins as a short term project, but has long term affects because it is directly related to the student. This project can also lead into more learning opportunities like holidays around the world, and cultural celebrations from around the world to include foods, music, art, and dance.

How will you know it is working?

When students are excited, asking questions, and engaged I know they are learning. Additionally, when students use what the learned for background knowledge in future learning opportunities, I know they really “got it!”

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My school has already (/still improving) awesome programs and strategies to embed international-mindedness.

We have weekly language lesson. The students from various background are given an option to choose one of some languages. Language teachers are not only teaching language itself, but also we introduce culture and everything is related to that country.

Class teachers get involved in language class. So not only students are bilingual/multilinguals, their teachers are also engaged into that. We need to show to students that all of us are language learners.

Some class teachers give a (morning) greeting in different languages.

In some units of inquiry, they will be asked to express themselves in certain topics about in their own culture. As we know they’re coming from diverse background.

Annual “Mother Tongue” night. Students and teachers will perform about their culture as a form of celebration and appreciation to global community.

The school community always emphasizes that we all need to respect and have a good understanding one another.  I believe these programs are working for long-term. And of course we can’t do it alone but we can start from ourselves. We need a collaboration among teachers, students and the whole staff.

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Plan to foster international-mindedness:

* Having a variety of books about diversity in the classroom. Reading them to the students as read alouds and comparing the culture in the books with their own culture.

* Pick one country every morning and talk about it with your students.

1. compare the chosen country with their own country.
a. clothing
b. food
c. religion
d. geography
e. population
f. photos of the country

2. learn some of the language
a. Hello
b. Thank you
c. Goodbye

3. Talk about the place
a. Do you want to live there? Why or why not?
b. What do you need in order to live there?
c. Who would you take with you?

This plan can be done alone, but you can always collaborate with other classes if desired. This is a long-term plan since there are 195 countries in the world :).

Doing this daily will help students understand and be more knowledgeable about other parts of the world. It helps them become more internationally minded.

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I would like to try Travel Buddies (article suggested by Sharyn in one of her posts) in my classroom in the future when it is safe to do so. I would need to collaborate with my grade level team, to make sure this is an experience that everyone in the grade has a chance to participate in, and get approval from the school. It would be nice to find multiple ways to connect this with the curriculum, though it would depend entirely on if people respond to the requests sent with the stuffed animals. Assuming that we get some responses, we could connect geography by mapping out the path taken, literacy by writing questions, researching, and reading, and social studies by learning about important issues in certain places. This could be a part of the Where We Are in Place and Time unit of inquiry. I would consider this a long-term strategy as it would be a year-long project. I think this would be successful if students are able to recall different countries that the travel buddies checked in at and remember something about some of the countries, culture, language, climate, etc.

Another project I would like to try is finding children's books that connect to certain countries and group them together. We could learn about various perspectives and experiences within one country. It would take a lot of planning, especially to find the books. I would need help from the school librarian and other teacher friends to help curate the books. This would be a long-term strategy and could involve literacy, geography, language, social studies.

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Travel buddies promote international-mindedness as they roam the globe and send back photos and information about their travels. These stuffed animals provided by second grade students, tagged and sent on their way are connecting an IB World School to the world.
"A travel buddy checked in today!" When I say those words, my class cheers, because my second graders (7-8 years) know it means we once again get to spend some time getting to know our world. This valuable program allows my Primary Years Programme (PYP) students a chance to learn and grow with knowledge of international-mindedness.

International-mindedness, according to Carolyn Savage in her IB Community Blog article entitled International-mindedness - Teachers are talking about it, but what exactly is it? means:

Understanding, respecting and valuing different cultures, embracing diversity and knowing that different perspectives have a great deal to offer.

My school has struggled with this aspect of the IB in our short, 5 years of authorization. When a retired teacher friend told me that her idea of travel budies from years ago would be perfect for the IB and the digital age, I immediately realized that this could be a way to promote international-mindedness in our small corner of the IB world.

At the beginning of the school year, I ask each student to bring in a travel buddy stuffed animal, one that they would not mind losing if the travel buddy 'decides' to live with someone else. I tag each stuffed animal with a note that has my name, school name and address, Twitter, Instagram and email account information to facilitate check-ins. It also explains our idea of passing the travel buddy on to someone else, a relative or not. I make the travel buddy program optional, but all students want to participate to see where their travel buddy goes!

Using our travel buddies, my students have broadened their knowledge of the world, geographically, historically and culturally. When travel buddies check in from Thailand, Madagascar, Hawaii, New York, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Jordan, San Francisco, Serbia and other parts of the world, my students begin to view their world through the fresh eyes of their travel buddies. We use maps and technology to track their travels. We post their photos and travelogues for parents to see. Each photo of a travel buddy creates new conversations about our world: "What is the name of that big waterfall?", "Those children in Serbia are in school too?". These connections can, in some small way, blossom into bigger, more global investigations. One travel buddy photo showed two small children who were begging for food, which began amazing conversation and research in our class about global starvation.

This year, travel buddy Chester visited Colombia and Ecuador, and taught us the culture, history and geography of these beautiful countries. We were able to connect these visits with our unit under the transdisciplinary theme How we express ourselves, a study of artistic cultural expression, when we saw 3D murals outside businesses in Guatape, Colombia that depicted without words what business was inside. Students immediately wanted to do the same thing, so in a purely student-driven moment; we created our own mural with each student holding something they like to do in class. It is hanging outside our classroom. No words, just creative expression!

In my two years of implementing this programme, our travel buddies have traveled to 6 continents and more than 20 countries. Some are passed to relatives for travel, some to strangers who pass them along to others. Almost all of the travel buddies returned to our school last year before the school year ended and we celebrated their travels with a party!

Travel buddies take a bit of planning and tending throughout the year, but the rewards in promoting global awareness and international-mindedness are without measure. Our world can use more international understanding. Travel buddies is one positive way my students can grow in knowledge and understanding of the global community.

Reference:

Savage, C. (2017). International-mindedness - teachers are talking about it, but what exactly is it?
Barbara Gaffrey is a second grade (7-8 yrs) teacher at Summit Charter Academy, an IB World School in Central California, USA. In her 33rd year of teaching 6-7-8 year olds, she has received training in Reading Recovery, English Language Development and has embraced technology in the classroom. She has promoted international-mindedness with travel buddies through social media for two years. You can read her previous articles here. She tweets @GaffreyGrade2.

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Travel buddies promote international-mindedness as they roam the globe and send back photos and information about their travels. These stuffed animals provided by second grade students, tagged and sent on their way are connecting an IB World School to the world. "A travel buddy checked in today!"

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No change is possible alone , the learning community needs to collaborate for incorporating international mindedness in leaners. The mother tongue language usage for simple greetings can really help the young leaners to embrace the cultural differences and displaying different objects/ resources (games , toys , pictures from different parts of the world ) both inside and outside the classroom will certainly encourage students to explore the cultural diversities locally and globally.

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Classrooms, with the teacher as a facilitator, can work with their students to create a project that incorporates international-mindedness. A classroom could decide they want to do a class project about the different holidays around the world, or a class could do a project about holidays, where they could be writing reviews. I did a project once where my students decided they wanted to each do their own 'research project' and then become new reporters. One student was at a football match in Brazil, a couple students 'reported' from the Amazon rainforest, one student 'reported' during Christmas in Seoul. They had so much fun researching, writing and preparing their speaking parts.

This would be a work in progress and part of the 3 year strategic implementation of the IB program.

The entire staff would need to be given the opportunity to share their ideas and to provide feedback.

Short term as far as 2-3 years to gather data/evidence then to make changes that fit the needs of our students.

Feedback from stakeholders and the response from the students.

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Some of the strategies I would suggest to Andrea to display the "Reflective" learner profile trait by examining her own strengths and experiences she can bring to the classroom (both literally and figuratively) to encourage international-mindedness in their schools.
If Andrea is a 'global nomad' simply decorating her classroom to represent different locations and cultures can spark curiosity and conversation. She should incorporate an 'international calendar' in her classroom, one that is not over focused on the traditional
Western-Gregorian calendar, one that emphasizes "open-mindedness" to other cultures and religions. She can even go so far as to invite in 'guest speakers' to read international-minded books on these calendars. These people could potentially be her peers, parents, or personal connections from her own life.

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In my School, Westwood International school we promote international mindedness through activities such as; cultural dress up days, through our unit of inquiry (e.g. belief systems), exploration of different languages especially the host country native language which is compulsory.  

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In my School, Westwood International school we promote international mindedness through activities such as; cultural dress up days, through our unit of inquiry (e.g. belief systems), exploration of different languages especially the host country native language which is compulsory.  

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Dress up days
We have cultural themed days where all students dress up in their cultural or country of origin national color days.

Unit of Inquiries
Students design their family trees and present to the whole class and during assemblies and also post their presentations in boards around school to educate others of their family history. A unit of inquiry of beliefs systems where students learn about different religious beliefs. Individual students belonging to different religions teach their peers about the different religions. Parents are also invited to the school to present to the students.

Language
The host country's language is compulsory as a subject. Students are encouraged to use this language in school in appreciation of the host country. The language French is also offered with a consideration of an introduction of chinese in response to the increase in the number of new students who are chinese.

Something that my school does not really do much is celebrating other religious and cultural calendars actively eg. Diwali, Victory Europe day, Chinese new year. Etc.

A collaboration between the whole school community is the most effective way to promote international mindedness. The schools mission itself should clearly speak to the promotion of international mindedness.

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I am very fortunate to work in a multicultural class & school (8 nationalities in a class of only 15 kids) and we are in a small country with 2 official languages and 15 or so local languages. International mindedness is necessary, encouraged and a part of our school culture. In my class we use greetings and basic phrases from our "culture pool" daily and also sing in different languages for music and fun. Our school holds an annual "mother tongue" event that is all about celebrating language diversity. For us these are our norm, but for school environments that aren't so fortunate I'd strongly suggest implementing aspects of multicultural-ness such as language and music into daily or weekly routines. It's important to "normalise" international mindedness, to strive for it to go beyond novelty or a 'subject' but instead to settle as a class or school norm.   

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I am very fortunate to work in a multicultural class & school (8 nationalities in a class of only 15 kids) and we are in a small country with 2 official languages and 15 or so local languages. International mindedness is necessary, encouraged and a part of our school culture. In my class we use greetings and basic phrases from our "culture pool" daily and also sing in different languages for music and fun. Our school holds an annual "mother tongue" event that is all about celebrating language diversity. For us these are our norm, but for school environments that aren't so fortunate I'd strongly suggest implementing aspects of multicultural-ness such as language and music into daily or weekly routines. It's important to "normalise" international mindedness, to strive for it to go beyond novelty or a 'subject' but instead to settle as a class or school norm.   

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ps: Idk why it's posted as anonymous so I ought to add my name: Brent Strathdee-Pehi

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I teach visual arts in elementary school. One of the main goals of my course, apart from exploring and developing their creativity, is that through art, students learn to value diversity (variety of styles, practices, customs, ideologies, ways of expressing themselves, etc.) And it's something that comes relatively easily, organically, when week after week we explore artists, men and women, from different countries and each one with different messages and ways of expressing themselves. Of course, if this could be done in conjunction with other courses, the message would be even more powerful and memorable for students.

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Ateesha A Salecha - Embedding international-mindedness 

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Ateesha A Salecha - Embedding international-mindedness 

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We can encourage students to
1. share their cultures, food, tradition, holidays throughout the year with their classmates.
2. By integrating UOI with art, students cna explore multiple perspectives.
3. Preparing a country based short play in which students can present their culture, traditions and diversities. This will develop empathy and they will start appreciating and valuing the diversity of peoples, cultures and societies in the world.
4. Making them watch different short films and documentary films.

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Working at an international school, I've noticed strategies for developing an international perspective on a daily basis. Therefore, in the classroom we work many multicultural and diverse readings, whether in groups or individually. Mainly non-fiction books bring a range of reflections comparing events to our own reality. This literary practice can be carried out between teacher and class, however, it is interesting that the entire school community gets involved in these discussions and continues to work on these aspects, whether in other disciplines or through other resources.