The class started off the school year discussing where students are from by placing their homelands on a map. This acted as a visual and a way to share diversity within the classroom. The travel corner would be a great extension of this activity.  The travels could be added to the map throughout the year after each major holiday. Students could share their experiences and facts learned.  Cross curricular activities could be embedded by reading folktales or short stories from the countries the students traveled to, while comparing and contrasting classic well known stories the students know. 

How do I know it is working?  Student engagement, noticings and connections, inquiry questions from students with a drive to find the answers

Inquiries of Global Human Similarities:  This can be implemented easily by the teacher and shared with grade level teams, technology teachers, librarians and other specialists.

Start with a guiding question that will spark students interest.  

Some examples:   Is education important?  What is waste?  What makes a good house?

Once a guiding question has been asked, allow students optimal time to explore the question using age appropropriate websites.  Compare and contrast the information they found with information from other countries.  Introduce multiple compare and contrast strategies and allow students to choose what works best for them.

How do I know it is working?  Students are engaged, asking and answering questions, comparing and contrasting

Explore other Countries:  Can be implemented easily by any teacher.

Use Google Earth. 360cities, GeoGuessr and identify similarities and differences between their own regions and others.   

I did this when I moved to Egypt from the U.S.  Students were very interested to know why the houses in Egypt were not made from wood like the ones in the U.S.  This simple activity sparked many different discussions and inquiries.

How do I know it is working?   When students engage to create their own wonderings.

 

A major benefit of ZIS is that we strive to be an inclusive school. We respect all backgrounds, cultures, and languages, while we also celebrate our diversity by doing a few events that promote international-mindedness. 

 

Our Year 9’s arranged an International Day where we had different stalls that showcased all the different nationalities that we have at our school. The students participated in traditional dances, face painting, food, and drink sampling as well as enjoyed the unique “attractions” that each country has to offer. This was a memorable celebration and brought our school together in harmony. 

 

We also had a Book Month, where parents of students came in and read to the kids in their native languages. We had parents read in Korean, Afrikaans, Japanese, Polish, English, and French. The students were engaged throughout and there were even students that attended the readings even though they couldn’t speak any of those languages. This showed us that the students were interested in learning more languages.

 

To further promote international-mindedness, our school can do the following:

 

·      Celebrate popular western and Chinese festivals. This will teach the students about famous festivals that are celebrated around the world. In some classes, we celebrated Earth Day, Book Day, and St Patrick’s Day, but these weren’t school-wide events, and more students need this exposure.
 
 

·      Cultural Exchanges: In a post-Covid world, students can travel to other countries on a cultural or language exchange and this will help our students to become familiar with countries other than those that they are familiar with, and they can even become more international-minded, as they can learn a new language whilst being abroad for a few weeks. This experience will help the students to be completely immersed in another culture.
 
 

·      The possibility to learn a 3^rd language:
Give the students an option to study another language at school. We have Korean and Japanese students in our school, and this will give them a wonderful opportunity to learn their own language in an international setting. On a personal note, I will prefer if my son can learn Spanish, as this is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
 
 

I can celebrate festivals on my own, but this won’t give the school a chance to become international-minded. The rest will fall on the shoulders of the Principals and parents.

 

 

Festivals: 

The PYP homeroom and specialist teachers can work together to create cross-curricular themes related to the festivals. 

 

Cultural / Language Exchange Trips:

This will need to be arranged with the Principals and parents of our school. There should be a plan in place and an estimated budget that should be agreed upon by parents and the school alike. 

 

Third Language in School:

The main person who can approve this is our PYP principal. He can work closely with the Literature Coordinator to see where we can fit this in our daily schedule.

 

 

All of these are long-term strategies and could take a while to implement, as there is a lot of strategic planning involved.

 

 

Festivals: When all the teachers collaborate to create a wonderful, festive event that the students can enjoy and learn from. 

 

Cultural / Language Exchange Trips: When the students return to present their findings and share their experiences of the trips they took.

 

Third Language:

When this gets implemented into our curriculum and teachers have the resources to successfully teach a third language. We will also see success when students sign up for a third language.

We need to put into consideration that due to the 2 yrs COVID situation, a lot would have had less exposure even to relatives & family friends so the plan needs to be slow &/or adjusted as the worldwide/national situation becomes clearer.

The long term plan/timeline:

1.My class/school: Introduce the class to their classmates as a community & note the similarities/differences between them

2.My school/My community;  Arrange a visit or invite a government school (underprivileged children) so children are introduced to a different section/class. This will also promote caring and should have at the time/follow up action. ( like arranging games or activities & having the parents volunteer to prepare a meal & giveaways)

3.My community/Egypt: Introduce in class different communities living in Egypt: rural areas-city-desert/oasis-slums ( pictures/videos/ items)

4.My Governerates/ Egypt: Introduce classes to different governorates: North/coastal – south/Nubia/- Suez canal/red sea – River valley… (guest speakers-pictures/videos/ items)

5.Egypt: Have an “I Love Egypt“ day with costumes-dances- dishes chosen by groups in class as a collaborative activity & invite the parents.

6.Egypt/Africa: Introduce students to Africa as their continent & assign an African project: Choose a country & research about it. Read folk stories from these different countries. (drama)

7.Egypt/Arab World: Introduce the Arab world & its countries. Listen to different songs, concentrate on the dialects, accents and national costumes. Have parents come in to talk about a country they have traveled to & bring in souvenirs or pictures.

8.The World: Introduce the big wide world. Hit on different continents. Are there common things within the countries of each continent? What language(s) do people speak? Where would you like to visit? Move to? Why?

9.Host an International Day where children & parents celebrate diversity with costumes, food, dances, music… from different countries.

10.Have a Show & Tell: bring in an item from your travels & talk about it ( most children would have traveled as this is a private school. If not they can bring in something from their travels in Egypt)

11.Have an International Games Day organized by parents when children can come & play different games from around the world.

12. Ask a travel agency to come & give a presentation about different travel destinations around the world & have a project creating a poster to promote one of these destinations. (or visit a website like https://www.travelzoo.com/)

13.Students can join a pen-pal website https://www.penpalschools.com/  (or any such websites to promote: international mindedness- reading-writing-social skills-writing/correspondence etiquette-responsibility-open mindedness…

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This of course will be a long term plan That will remain ongoing but for a new school this plan will be followed for all levels until it is staggered as classes are promoted.

This will require a parents workshop/post to familiarize parents with the goal & ask for their commitment & help.

The school needs to reach out to the  whole community for help & connect children to the outside world.

Assessing to see how effective the plan is would be a bit tricky but it will be mainly through ongoing observation: following their reaction to different classmates ( background – ethnicity- looks…) or their reactions/observations/comments when introduced to novel experiences & different people or cultures.

This would not be limited to a single activity, but rather a live and interactive teaching strategy used the entire school year.

 Have a designated wall space titled: “I SEE strength in others and myself, I THINK  of others, I WONDER what I can do to respect others and spread kindness in this class and in this world?”. I would begin using the first day in school.

1.)Display a picture of every child in your classroom with space to share about themselves as well as a space to receive reflection and feedback from the rest of the class. Establish that this will be a ‘live’ discussion and reflection tool throughout the school year. 

2.)Have every child reflect on their own diversity and strengths and offer them suggestions as to how to present and teach their uniqueness to the rest of the class. Display “individual presentations next to students' pictures (even just pictures of students presenting).

3.)After presenting, allow the rest of the class time to give specific feedback. Encourage the class to continue to “message’ and share connections by adding notes, art, pics, etc. to each other's designated wall space. 

4.)After allowing all students to share, I would move outside of the classroom by adding a section called “My Community”, “My Country”, and finally “My World”. The process would be the same, but the format would change appropriately…this moves into COLLABORATING WITH OTHERS.

5.)I would invite community members to share the history, traditions, and uniqueness of our community. Instead of having a space in the classroom, we could share and continue to connect with the member(s) of the community through field trips, electronically, or even letters. This would continue to grow as we connect with other classrooms in the country and finally other classrooms in countries throughout the world. As we connected we would take time to celebrate with each other by interacting in some of the same traditions or celebrations new to our class.

6.) Finally by the end of the year, we will have established connections and hopefully close relationships in our own class, community, and truly around the world. 

I will know if this is working by the students' engagement both at the beginning and end of the school year. By having a designated space and place to establish expectations from the beginning, I could monitor the feedback to ensure it is appropriate and shows true reflection from the students. To know if I truly created International Mindedness, I would follow up with students the following year and find out if they maintained or continued connecting with the relationships we established throughout the prior year.

When getting to know the children and their families at the beginning of the year, take time to  find out about the different cultural backgrounds of the children in the class. Can discuss similarities and differences

Create with the children and “All about Me’ display including the information about the children - pictures, flags, map, languages spoken etc

Meaningfully acknowledge cultural important festivals and celebrations and encourage participation from the school community, could be online or in person. 

Encourage children to bring in home language books, if they have them.

Community Picnic - families can be encouraged to share their culture by getting together in year groups and sharing traditional foods.

United Nations Mother Tongue Day - we celebrated this in our school in February. It was a great day and within our class the children were so excited to share their home language/languages.

For in class activities this would involve my year group.

For the whole school activities, this would involve planning with different stages and management.

Reflections from children, staff and school community and asking for their comments and suggestions

Another activity that I have been a part of is an “International Food Festival”. This was the biggest event of the year at one of my previous schools and hundreds of people from both the school and the surrounding community would attend every year. Our students, staff and parents would prepare traditional dishes from their home countries and there were dozens of booths serving this food, as well as artisans giving demonstrations and selling their work. We had music, games and dance performances, as well. 

All stakeholders in my school community are to join in this mission. The school will recognise the nationalities our children possess and celebrate that by posting a printed map where every birth place of them is marked by a pin with their pictures on it. 

Who might you need to collaborate with?
All the school's management, staff, parents and students are to join, as mentioned above. The school will then hold open sessions to all participants, in which we will show videos of ill-mannered people abroad for children to point and laugh at, but later on to draw conclusion on the cultural awareness around the globe.

Children will then work together to design posters to introduce about the community where they come from, and what the expectations might be in those communities, including behaviours, social norms, or customs etc. 

Is this a short-term strategy or a long-term strategy?
Short-term purpose is to keep the classroom decorated with meaningful cultural elements and symbols.

In the long-term, children will develop empathy and respect towards different cultures and communities.

How will you know it is working?
The proof of product will show as children present their own projects. Moreover, the willingness to participate and help with other children's projects is a great measurement of empathy. All in all, international-mindedness is a concept which should be enforced across all subjects and activities at the school.

- plan to create opportunities for students to engage with global communities. 

- research opportunities for global action

- plan to include a wider range of resources from different cultures and languages in  lessons 

-Look at our programme of inquiry and see how far it encourages diversity and international mindedness

-exploring global concerns such as the environment and rights and responsibilites and sustainable development in units of inquiry 

- do a walk around the school looking at the displays to see how far they promote international mindedness and thinking about how and where we can display more languages and cultures. 

- create a display where all of the students can post their home countrites on a map and any pictures of information they want to share. 

- books and resources

- Plan opportunities for all members of the community to share their own cultures such as a monthly assembly or a show and tell in class. 

- think about members of the community and how we can get them involved what kind of events could we invite them into school to share their cultures. 

 

*I will need to collaborate with our whole community, teachers, students, parents and the wider community to implement this plan as these will involve the whole school and are long term changes. I think we will know when it is working when their is a change in the school culture. 

I won't be able to introduce new ideas to students without parents, colleagues, and principals' support. Firstly, I would prepare the key points and preliminary lesson plan PPT. Then, I would talk to my line manager and the school principal and show my ideas. After that, if I received approval, I would organize a parent meeting to present the idea. If the parents liked the idea, I would cooperate with the scheduler to find time in the students' schedules. 

2. Who might you need to collaborate with?

Apart from working with the school principal, colleagues, and parents, I may need to cooperate with colleagues from different states. 

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

My idea to implement an International-Mindedness is a long-term one. I believe that the students may need some time to get used to a lesson routine and slowly change their mindset. I think it will take a year or more. 

4. How will you know it is working?

Being an experienced teacher allows me to see when the students make some progress. They will reply/answer faster, become more confident, and be more engaging. To see some results, I may need a month or so.