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My responce to Toni.
I only started working as a music teacher this September, so the whole field is very new to me and I'm still trying to get to know everything. The school where I teach has a very diverse group of students, including those with disabilities.  For this reason international mindedness is incredibly important. We use many different ways to encourage learning, getting to know other cultures and the environment. We try to get to know the traditions of all the halls, the holidays they celebrate or important dates in their culture or religion. We do this by making music, painting, discussing, making rhythms, playing instruments. Students love to explore and learn new things.

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My repsonse to Toni:
I have similar experience with you, living my whole life in a community whitout a lot of variety. This is my second year to work in an international school, too. I also face the challenge of how to help myself and the students developing the international mindedness.

In my opinion, I think first of all we need to help ourselves identify who we are in this world. Our names, gender, nationality, family, personalities, habits, interest, etc. construct this identity. There will be something we like and dislike ourselves; and we need to accept this before we can go on and accept others who are different from us.

Previously, I  used to hold workshops to help the students understand themselves more before acceptance happens. I once do a self-exploration workshop via a card changing game based on the DISC theory. It works well with upper elementary and secondary students. In the workshop, I let them to explore what personality trais described them the best and share them with the group. After that, I encourage the students to select 2-3 traits they appreciate the most from each other. With this activity, I emphasize the uniqueness of every individual and teach the student to recognize, accept and appreciate their own (and also others') characteristics. Throughout the game, I strived to bring out the message that everyone is unique and thus are equal (We are all different, thus we are all the same to each other). There is nothing wrong if we find a different trait, appearance, speech or any preference from the people surrounding us. On the other hands, only because we have billions of different people in this world, the world becomes rich and beautiful and we will never get bored ;). Even when we moved to another countires, encountered people from other nation, or with different background, we can always connect with them positively and friendly.

I also have another idea of doing drama in which there are characters from different background/culture. It can be scripted or free-style. The purpose is the let them experience how does it look like to connect with people from all around the world.

o   Can you make this change alone?
I think no.

o   Who might you need to collaborate with?
Students, teachers, parents, etc.

o   Is this a short-term strategy or a long-term strategy?
One workshop is relatively short term but to explore self and to build the ability to appreciate others is a very long-term journey. We can build up a series of activities to promote that if necessary.

o   How will you know it is working?
From the feedback of the students after workshop, see how well they can practice what they have learned in daily life.

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LE 3- Embedding International Mindedness

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LE 3- Embedding International Mindedness

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LE3_Embedding International Mindedness on Padlet

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Promote active engagement from and to learning communities

Help out local communities - clean up neighborhoods, food drives/ donations etc.

Have parent volunteers come to the classroom and read out stories or do the presentation about their country’s traditions or celebration etc.

For each unit, find and introduce age-appropriate local’s, nation’s, and world’s challenges or issues (i.e. climate change, poverty)

Have them collaborate to find solution to the real-world problems

Have students share their group's work via writing, drawing, presentation, video-recording etc. (use different types of delivery method)

Get a routine of doing a daily or weekly report where students/ group take a turn to introduce local/nation/global issues.

Create a culture of being an inquirer about the report presented

Wonder wall

Inquiry journal

1. Can you make this change alone?

No

2. Who might you need to collaborate with?

Learning communities, school team, online

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

Finding solutions to world problems can be short-term projects but encourage students to pay attention to the matter continuously and keep looking for solutions.

Creating a culture within the classroom and school community is a long-term project.

4. How will you know it is working?

Students & learning communities’ reflections and feedback. Students’ growth in dealing with any conflicts with daily lives. Students’ paying attention to others and global events/ problems.

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I have decided to respond to Toni.

As a speech-language pathologist, I work with individuals and or students in a small groups.  Therefore, choosing resources that are more applicable and individualized to the students is more accessible.  Depending on the speech and language goals I am working on, I could incorporate international mindedness by incorporating videos of different cultures worldwide.  My students are primarily multi-sensory learners, so providing visual and auditory aids from the videos would help them explore other global perspectives at their level.  It will promote diversity using different mediums of books and images as well.

At times, I work with students who come from Spanish-speaking backgrounds.  If paired up in a group with others, we could work on a project and choose a tradition that one of the students' practices to help teach others about other cultures.  It connects multilingualism, intercultural understanding, and global engagement while tapping into their personal lives and sharing their experiences with others.

Typically my work is more individual, depending on the students on my caseload, but I can collaborate with the classroom teachers to see how they are introducing international-mindedness in their classrooms.  These options are long-term solutions because as the students progress through the grades, they will have additional support and strategies provided in the classroom by the teachers.

I would know this works when seeing how the students discuss and interact regarding diversity and other cultural topics discussed or introduced in our sessions.

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Ken Su - Plan in the Embedding international-mindedness

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Ken Su - Plan in the Embedding international-mindedness

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My plan to share with you all. Thank you!

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The plan of things to implement in the classroom to embed international

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This is an exciting time for my school, and I hope this invokes conversations about the benefits of translanguaging. I feel it is possibly the crux of helping embed international-mindedness into every day teaching and learning.

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Hannah Walker - Migration Unit for Upper Primary

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Hannah Walker - Migration Unit for Upper Primary

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I have LOVED our migration unit and found so many connections to international mindedness. One of the best ways to encourage empathy and international mindedness is to share our stories. We have done this through our human migration unit. Teachers, students and parents from all areas of the school have come in to share their own migration stories. It's such a wonderful way for us to learn about each others' experiences, challenges, opportunities, etc. Our class read aloud, "Home of the Brave" by Katherine Applegate, also adds another perspective that we haven't seen in our own community.

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Learning engagement 3: Embedding International-mindedness

I decided to respond to Andrea

This is my plan
As a "global nomad" you must have a wealth of experiences to share with your kids, they are so lucky to have you as their teacher. Your students are still small and their world of experience is still very limited.

Start of by making students aware of their own ancestry. They can share stories from their own culture and traditions.

Ask students to bring anything traditional from their culture to school - have like a show and tell day at school.

This can be expanded as an "Explore the world" activity. Look at maps to see where students are from. This will help students to gain knowledge about different countries, the climate and environment of that country. They can then compare different countries.

But since you have a lot of friends and colleagues in other countries you have stayed in, you might try to have your students connect and interact with the other children via zoom. This could be a fun and practical way to introduce your kids to different cultures.

You can also try and introduce them to activities that promote multiculturalism. Look out for multicultural events in your area and take them on a field trip, or suggest to their parents to take them to these events. This can also help them to experience different cultures through food, art, and traditions.

You can also encourage your students to watch movies with multiculturalist approaches. This can help your students cultivate international friendships.

The students can then present what they learned with a variety of media (drawings, songs, etc. since they are still young) on the children they have met from around the world.

Combined with the learner profile attributes of open-mindedness and caring this can lead to class discussions about different cultures and also to respect our differences but also to embrace our uniqueness.

Can you make this change alone?

Yes or as a team or online with
teachers around the world.

Who might you need to collaborate with?

School team or online teachers

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

It can be  short or long term because
they can keep in touch with the new
friends they meet.

How will you know it is working?

By doing reflection activities on what
they have learned. Their presentations
will be evidence and show their level
of knowledge and understanding.

Regards
Karin

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My plan based on things I think my school needs

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This is the first international school I have worked in and I feel that more can be done to embed international-mindedness.
Only recently did I make a discovery that a child in my class who I knew was French can also speak fluent Mandarin. I want to encourage my students to speak their home and family languages and to feel empowered to share their cultural identity.

My class love any opportunity to take on the teacher role. I would love to see them use their knowledge of their cultural background to share within the learning environment. There are children in my class with similar backgrounds who are unfamiliar with this knowledge as the children do spend their day speaking English.

Someone on our course had suggested a great icebreaker activity which I would definitely use. My class return from the Christmas break tomorrow and we have a new child joining our school. I have decided today that I will implement this tomorrow.

I can make some changes within my class on my own but if I want to embed international-mindedness throughout my whole school I would need the support of management. I would like to bounce ideas with all of the professionals I work with especially as we have teachers who have experience all around the world.

I would know I had made a difference when my class could confidently name the languages their friends can speak. They may be able to share something interesting they have discovered about different friends in the class.