"Global Citizenship," or what the International Baccalaureate Organization terms "International Mindedness," is a fuzzy concept. Every educator wants it but few are able to define it. More importantly, few can describe how exactly to cultivate it in a school. There's a reason for this. The concept, intriguingly, has been ignored by academia, with the result that literally no operational definition exists. Fascinating, right? Particularly now, as we witness such political polarization around the world. The desire to move towards a shared understanding of international mindedness, along with determination to conquer the IB's bewilderingly complex framework for language acquisition (while helping our students retain a coherent sense of identity!) are what prompted the convening of our first Language and Identity Forum for Educators (LIFE).
We were determined to run this conference differently than many of our own conference experiences, which have involved making fleeting, often superficial connections with other educators during long presentations of dubious worth. We wanted meaningful connections and practical, valuable outcomes for all attendees.
LIFE was a joint effort of Woodstock's Language Department and the Centre for Imagination. We carefully selected ten, like-minded IB schools around India to invite, including the American School of Bombay, UWC Mahindra in Pune, Deutsche Schule Bombay, American International School of Chennai, Heritage Xpeditionary School, Mercedes-Benz International, Pathways, Kodaikanal International School, The Doon School, and Oberoi International. Joining us to share his research and inspire us was Dr. Douglas Kennedy, whose areas of expertise include cultural intelligence and the introduction of mindfulness practice in schools. In preparation for the Forum, we all took the revealing, multi-rater CQ assessment out of the Cultural Intelligence Center in Singapore and Doug spent some time leading us through the results.
Doug has considerable experience helping schools and teachers understand what high and low CQ look like in daily life, and what sort of steps they might take to increase their CQ. The most common finding is that educators (and perhaps all of us) overestimate our cultural awareness and intelligence. We may be surprised to learn that our students and coworkers regularly observe and identify even micro-moments of cultural ignorance and sometimes offense. If we begin to recognize the difficulties, how might we train ourselves to move more fluidly across cultural boundaries in ways that honor the diversity we encounter?
As a host, I learned again the profound value of simply creating the right spaces for real, human connection, and therefore growth, to take place. From the beginning dinner reception outdoors in our beautiful, Himalayan surroundings to the closing dinner high at the top of the mountain, looking out over the valley, we interspersed the presentation of hard-core academic research with informal opportunities to socialize and share ideas and resources. By the time we got to an afternoon open space session dedicated to looking forward, we had a flood of ideas for specific ways to grow a lively network of language teachers and school leaders dedicated to working out the concept of International Mindedness. Here are some top outcomes:
We were determined to run this conference differently than many of our own conference experiences, which have involved making fleeting, often superficial connections with other educators during long presentations of dubious worth. We wanted meaningful connections and practical, valuable outcomes for all attendees.
LIFE was a joint effort of Woodstock's Language Department and the Centre for Imagination. We carefully selected ten, like-minded IB schools around India to invite, including the American School of Bombay, UWC Mahindra in Pune, Deutsche Schule Bombay, American International School of Chennai, Heritage Xpeditionary School, Mercedes-Benz International, Pathways, Kodaikanal International School, The Doon School, and Oberoi International. Joining us to share his research and inspire us was Dr. Douglas Kennedy, whose areas of expertise include cultural intelligence and the introduction of mindfulness practice in schools. In preparation for the Forum, we all took the revealing, multi-rater CQ assessment out of the Cultural Intelligence Center in Singapore and Doug spent some time leading us through the results.
Doug has considerable experience helping schools and teachers understand what high and low CQ look like in daily life, and what sort of steps they might take to increase their CQ. The most common finding is that educators (and perhaps all of us) overestimate our cultural awareness and intelligence. We may be surprised to learn that our students and coworkers regularly observe and identify even micro-moments of cultural ignorance and sometimes offense. If we begin to recognize the difficulties, how might we train ourselves to move more fluidly across cultural boundaries in ways that honor the diversity we encounter?
As a host, I learned again the profound value of simply creating the right spaces for real, human connection, and therefore growth, to take place. From the beginning dinner reception outdoors in our beautiful, Himalayan surroundings to the closing dinner high at the top of the mountain, looking out over the valley, we interspersed the presentation of hard-core academic research with informal opportunities to socialize and share ideas and resources. By the time we got to an afternoon open space session dedicated to looking forward, we had a flood of ideas for specific ways to grow a lively network of language teachers and school leaders dedicated to working out the concept of International Mindedness. Here are some top outcomes:
- We will establish a professional learning community for school leaders and educators around the question of how to navigate diversity and increase CQ, led by Deutsche Schule Bombay. Part of this includes establishing a book-of-the-month club. April's book is Erin Meyer's The Culture Map.
- We will set up a network of shared online teachers across the country so that students can keep learning home languages, even when their language is underrepresented in a school.
- We will collaborate to create a curriculum for Hindi ab initio in the IB (a strange gap in the IB's thinking means that students are not yet able to study beginners' Hindi), led by UWC Pune.
- We will create a handbook for school leaders on how to cultivate International Mindedness, a handbook that includes an operational definition and a rubric for measuring whether progress is happening, a collaborative effort led by Woodstock's Centre for Imagination.
