Brookwood School's Global Awareness Project ("GAP") was a year-long project based learning initiative providing eighth grade students with the opportunity to collaborate with their peers around the world on real world issues/problems that are relevant to all parties. In the "GAP", students from each partner school developed and worked on local projects and gained global perspective through the sharing of their experiences with each other.
The Global Awareness Project is a component of Brookwood's broader commitment to global education, which has as its mission the graduation of culturally competent individuals prepared to embrace the challenges of an interconnected 21st century world. Specifically, the Global Awareness Project supports the following beliefs at Brookwood.
1. Students’ membership in their immediate communities, as well as their competence and confidence as global citizens, will be significantly enhanced by virtue of a global consciousness and a broad cultural awareness - The local project with global applications component of the GAP directly addresses this aspect of global consciousness and cultural awareness.
2. Students will be better prepared to solve problems, simple and grand, when their empathetic imaginations have been enlarged by exposure to and consideration of the culturally and ecologically rich world that surrounds and contains them - The GAP program puts students in the place of local problem identifiers and solvers. Providing a global context for this work helps deepen this experience.
3. Our students’ experience with differences will develop an enhanced self-awareness, and a fuller understanding and respect for those who practice, believe and live differently - Getting to know and work with students from our partner schools within the collaborative GAP framework provides Brookwood students with ideal opportunity to reflect upon themselves while encouraging respect for their peers with whom they are working.
4. Our experiences with diversity can sometimes pose challenges, but with a spirit of exploration and respect, these experiences will cultivate a sense of global citizenship and a greater appreciation for the common humanity that binds us - Through collaborations with partner school peers on common global issues, the GAP allows students to work through any differences our students might bump up against and experience this common humanity first hand.
5. The development of cultural competence is essential for success in a global environment and in our pursuit “to graduate academically accomplished students of conscience, character and compassion” - Offering students the opportunity to work closely with students from other cultures through the GAP directly provides them with the chance to acquire and practice those skills associated with cultural competency (ability to work with and respect those different from you, recognizing cultural biases, ability to understand and appreciate other cultures, etc.) and 21st century global citizenship, as well as Brookwood's "3 C's"
The Global Awareness Project is a component of Brookwood's broader commitment to global education, which has as its mission the graduation of culturally competent individuals prepared to embrace the challenges of an interconnected 21st century world. Specifically, the Global Awareness Project supports the following beliefs at Brookwood.
1. Students’ membership in their immediate communities, as well as their competence and confidence as global citizens, will be significantly enhanced by virtue of a global consciousness and a broad cultural awareness - The local project with global applications component of the GAP directly addresses this aspect of global consciousness and cultural awareness.
2. Students will be better prepared to solve problems, simple and grand, when their empathetic imaginations have been enlarged by exposure to and consideration of the culturally and ecologically rich world that surrounds and contains them - The GAP program puts students in the place of local problem identifiers and solvers. Providing a global context for this work helps deepen this experience.
3. Our students’ experience with differences will develop an enhanced self-awareness, and a fuller understanding and respect for those who practice, believe and live differently - Getting to know and work with students from our partner schools within the collaborative GAP framework provides Brookwood students with ideal opportunity to reflect upon themselves while encouraging respect for their peers with whom they are working.
4. Our experiences with diversity can sometimes pose challenges, but with a spirit of exploration and respect, these experiences will cultivate a sense of global citizenship and a greater appreciation for the common humanity that binds us - Through collaborations with partner school peers on common global issues, the GAP allows students to work through any differences our students might bump up against and experience this common humanity first hand.
5. The development of cultural competence is essential for success in a global environment and in our pursuit “to graduate academically accomplished students of conscience, character and compassion” - Offering students the opportunity to work closely with students from other cultures through the GAP directly provides them with the chance to acquire and practice those skills associated with cultural competency (ability to work with and respect those different from you, recognizing cultural biases, ability to understand and appreciate other cultures, etc.) and 21st century global citizenship, as well as Brookwood's "3 C's"
One key component of the "GAP" is the role of student voice in the development of the projects. Students begin the year by considering issues associate with cultural competency and global citizenry and then generating a list of global issues/problems of particular and personal interest to them. Students are then given the chance to look for local applications and manifestations of these global issues, all while keeping in mind potential contact and collaboration points with our global partners. Prospective local/global project ideas are then brainstormed and the list winnowed down until a reasonable number of projects that reflect the interests and passions of our students emerge. At that point, students self-select the issue on which they will be working for the year. Groups then begin the process of assigning roles (background research, local project coordinator, global project coordinator, communication point person), developing a driving question that will frame their year's project work, planning out the local and global projects, and beginning their work.
For more information, please contact Rich Lehrer at [email protected].
For more information, please contact Rich Lehrer at [email protected].