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II. Successful Progress and Depth of Integrating International Education Across Classroom Curriculum Subjects Within 12 months
A. Efficiency of Integration
The general expectation of school change is that transformation of
classroom teaching and learning takes place slowly over years of
time. And yet, in the C3 World Project, teachers made significant
changes in their teaching practice and curricula within 12 months
time.
Classroom teachers were able to build international education
collaborations into their classroom curricula, become examples for
colleagues in their buildings, present their work at conferences and
become advocates for international education with technology as a
school, district and state education expectation in all schools.
The following factors were critical to this success:
a) Introducing teachers to
how classroom use new technologies can connect teachers and
students to schools and classrooms around the world for collaborative
teaching and learning across curricula;
b) Providing in-classroom mentoring to implement global curricular projects;
c) Providing on-going
collaborative professional development seminars for teachers to learn
curriculum design for global curricular projects using Teaching for
Understanding with Technology (Wiske, Rennebohm Franz, & Breit,
Jossey-Bass 2005)and build a local supportive collaborative community
within and beyond their own school building;
d) Providing opportunities to take iEARN online professional development courses;
and
e) Providing opportunities
to attend the annual iEARN International Teachersí Conference to build
a strong and enduring global education partnerships and community with
teachers from around the world
C3 World teachers learned to use international education as a way to
integrate subject areas of social studies, literacy, science, world
languages, visual arts and service learning within real world
contexts. And as a result, they found that their students learned
with greater efficiency, had greater engagement and commitment to doing
schoolwork and developed comprehension of important curricular
concepts.
B. Classrooms Connecting with 20+ Countries Within 12 Months
Within 12 months, teachers and classrooms involved in the C3 World
Project made educational classroom connections through iEARN projects
with schools and communities in over 20 countries including:
Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Botswana, Croatia, Egypt, Gambia, Haiti,
India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Keniya, Lebanon, Netherlands, New Zealand,
Russia, Senegal, Slovakia, Taiwan, Uzbekistan.
World Languages teachers participating in the C3 World project met
their goals of having their students develop their Japanese and Spanish
language skills by communicating directly with students in Japan for
learning Japanese and in Argentina for learning Spanish.
C. Classrooms Participating in 22 iEARN Curricular Projects Within 12 Months
Within 12 months, C3 World teachersí iEARN curricular project
experiences in social studies, world languages, literacy, science,
visual arts and service learning included:
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Global Art Project: A Sense of Caring
Water Habitat Project
One Day in the Life Project
Holocaust Project
Kindred Project
Heroes Project
Comfort Quilt Project
Schools Outfitting Schools in Afghanistan Project
Art Miles Mural Project
Teddy Bear Project |
Lewin Project
Side by Side Project
Building Bridges of Understanding
The Story of Us
Malaria Project
Cultural Recipes Book
Laws of Life
Schools Outfitting Schools
My Hero project
The Story of Us Project
Daffodil Project |
D. Examples of C3 World Teacher Leadership
During the C3 World Professional Development Project, participating
teachers continually emerged in leadership roles. Here are
several examples:
C3 World teacher, Paula Fraser generated a new social studies iEARN
project, ìBuilding Bridges of Understandingî, that connects her
classroom in Washington State with classroom of Arab students in a
school and Jewish students in a Jewish school, both in Israel.
Her classroomís project work was designed to include Washington State
Social Studies Classroom-Based Assessment. The project happened as a
result of the three teachers meeting at the iEARN International
Teachers conference in Kosice, Slovakia.
C3 World teacher, Kosta Kyriacopoulo, in collaboration with a iEARN
teaching colleague he met in Senegal, designed a new integrated social
studies/literacy iEARN Project, ìThe Story of Usî for students to
understand how one anotherís cultural histories inform their present
lives. The project design includes a University of Washington
School of Education research study to assess and document student
literacy learning through student international collaborations.
C3 World teacher, Katherine Law was a participant in the iEARN BRIDGES
project teacher professional development week in New York City with
educators from the Middle East that was immediately followed by her
school hosting a visiting teacher from Uzbekistan.
C3 World teacher, Irene Hrab, whoís school meets the social, emotional,
academic and family needs of children experiencing trauma from violence
and homelessness, designed her class participation in iEARN projects to
successfully engage her students in active, literacy learning that
generated breakthrough performances in education for her students and
their families. Irene and First Place School education Director,
Barbara Bennett then provided leadership in having her whole school
become involved in doing iEARN curricular projects. She
lead implementation of Teaching for Understanding (TfU)
with Technology as a whole school curricular design framework.
Their first TfU project has been a focus on student character called
ìDoing the Right Thingî.
E. Teachers Identify Significant Impacts of C3 World Professional Developments
The two major impacts that teachers identified the C3 World Professional Development were:
- Understanding how to integrate iEARN curricular projects into their classroom teaching and learning so that:
- their students know about and understand the world beyond their immediate neighborhoods
- their students become actively engaged in learning with global peers on
important real world curricular topics and, as a result, make better
academic progress
- Understanding that now
they have a network of teachers and students around the world (and
locally) with whom they can connect to design and implement curricular
projects for student curricular collaboration on any local or global
topic, event, issues or need.
The professional development project has made an impact beyond just
having teachers engage in existing international curricular
projects. The teachers know how to generate new projects.
They understand how to use the model of current iEARN curricular
projects to generate classroom projects that address additional
specific topics, events, issues in the world today. They know how
to teach internationally so that their students understand how
education enables them to be global citizens now and into the future.
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