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In the heart of Eastern North Carolina, where educational resources are often scarce, the Transformational Scholars program serves as a beacon of hope and change, and is redefining the future of education in the Eastern region.
Launched in the summer of 2021 through the support of the Anonymous Trust, which also funded a study abroad experience for the Transformational Scholars, this initiative offers promising high school students from Eastern North Carolina who are interested in teaching a scholarship of $40,000 over four years. Students must commit to majoring in education and return to teach in an eastern county.
The vision of Transformational Scholars is not just about supporting education; it’s about igniting a domino effect of positive change that can ultimately uplift entire communities. Overall, this program seeks to provide future eastern North Carolina educators the skills they need to transcend the traditional bounds of teaching and to provide a positive, long-lasting effect through global immersion, high-impact reflection, and community bonding.
Dr. Trisha Mackey is the director of this program and works strategically to provide professional development and teacher toolboxes. She also helps students network with current educators to build their understanding of teaching through a pedagogical sound lens.
Student engagement with global perspectives
In a time when diversity, equity, and inclusion are being politically targeted, it is more vital than ever for students to be able to empathize with others and value diverse perspectives. However, the ability to value and understand differing perspectives aren’t inherent skills.
A study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggests that the ability to understand the perspectives of others depends on students’ global knowledge acquisition as students gain knowledge about other cultures’ histories, beliefs, linguistic styles, and practices. Once students learn about these different perspectives and hone in on understanding their own lives and practices, they develop the means to recognize their way of life and daily behaviors in the context of others worldwide. This is an understanding that students in K-12 aren’t constantly aware of but should be able to engage in effectively in our ever-changing world.
Global competence is often necessary for employment in the 21st century job market. That makes it appropriate for educators to inform students on different cultures in a cross-curricular way. Yet the ability to understand global perspectives surpasses the demand of being a professional in the workplace or getting a “good job.” Students must also have global competence to appreciate their fellow humans globally and become empathetic individuals.
Teacher training for global perspectives
OECD, World Savvy, and the Globally-Competent Teaching Continuum have frameworks outlining skills that include but are not limited to: understanding, recognizing, and appreciating diverse communities, cultures, and values worldwide. With this understanding, educators can take steps toward engaging their students with the world and eventually scaffold learning to help students as they create a toolbox filled with empathy, compassion, and appreciation.
But how do educators gain skills to foster globally mindful individuals? And what avenues can teacher candidates take to implement global perspectives in their curriculum?
There are numerous ways in which educators can do this, regardless of their subject area. A study conducted by Arizona State University Teachers College concluded that globally competent educators are those who have studied abroad and have five main strengths when bringing the world into their classroom. Globally competent educators can:
- Communicate in different languages or at least understand the difficulty of learning a new language based on their travel abroad. This ability and understanding create a welcoming classroom environment that allows students to feel comfortable conversing with each other in their first language. During classroom instruction, globally competent educators have been found to incorporate different languages regularly by introducing new words and having group discussions about those words, ultimately building respect and camaraderie amongst students.
- “Make a classroom environment that values diversity and global engagement.” Teachers who study abroad as undergraduates can draw on their experiences and provide specific global examples when teaching content-area skills, while providing opportunities for students to reflect on their impact on international issues. This interconnectedness can lead to students understanding the diverse lived realities of people worldwide.
- Promote learning in a way that involves students’ interests. They can present lessons for students to apply their knowledge to real world concerns. This promotes digital democracy and critical thinking regarding how human behaviors can contribute negatively or positively to the landscape of equity.
- Facilitate intercultural and even international conversations with their professors or with connections they gained abroad. Sharing these conversations and collaborating on this scale can provide students with authentic interactions worldwide.
- Surpass the initial goal of classroom assessments by using a variety of authentic differentiated and tiered assessments. This can be done through projects, presentations, or readings with rubrics that require students to critically analyze their own global competency and how they can improve their previous schemas to improve global systems.
The Teachers Evaluation and Professional Standards in North Carolina require educators to “embrace diversity in the school community and the world.” Teachers must also value conventional curriculum standards across their content area to embrace this standard with signature pedagogies. The implicit structure of valuing global citizenship is a strong rationale for integrating global content into the standard curriculum of math, science, English, social studies, and even health classes. Community service and service learning initiatives can also emerge as an authentic way to use signature pedagogies throughout the school year, cutting across disciplines and age groups to provide a worldview inside the classroom.
This can look like lab work focused on finding a global problem in science, case studies on global health issues in health class, inquiry-based approaches of global concerns in social studies and English courses, and in math, educators can use each unit as a way to describe the collective global understanding that math is a logic-based language used to impact the world.
Today’s education professionals must prepare youth for a profoundly interconnected world. In preparing students, practitioners must acknowledge that multiple learning targets exist in contemporary educational landscapes.
Supporting educators to study abroad
A major way for pre-service educators in teacher prep programs to gain these skills — and provide their students with them — is by engaging in study abroad programs. At North Carolina State University, the Transformational Scholars program took a trip to Costa Rica. The director of Global Programs for the College of Education at NC State, Ajayah Francis, supported my classmates and me as we asked questions regarding what global perspectives can do for our personal lives, how we can use these perspectives to inform our practice, and what we should do to engage fully in global education.
For the 2023-24 school year, the College of Education at NCSU reported record-breaking study abroad numbers, having the highest number of students abroad in the College of Education’s history. With 71 students studying abroad in 25 programs and in 14 countries, the total percentage of undergraduate students studying abroad is 79%. However, one main concern that many students in teacher prep programs have is how to pay for these programs. The College of Education at NCSU provided 40% of students with study abroad scholarships and connected students with alternate ways to pay for these immersive experiences.
For high school students applying to college as an education major and currently living in eastern North Carolina, the ability to study abroad might be closer than they think. The Transformational Scholars Program has committed itself to fostering global perspectives and enriching local education. Through the strong coordination efforts of Dr. Mackey, Mrs. Francis, and the Anonymous Trust, our team immersed ourselves in a deeply rich cultural exchange. We learned Spanish intensively through our daily classes at Intercultura in Costa Rica, digging into the joys of learning Spanish while also reflecting deeply on the struggles of learning Spanish and being in a new place.
This firsthand experience in a Spanish-speaking country is not merely an academic exercise; it is a profound opportunity to connect with our future students in Eastern North Carolina on a more meaningful level. Through the support of this program and the Anonymous Trust, all of the Transformational Scholars who went on this trip did so at no expense. This once-in-a-lifetime experience will be a game changer, not only for us as educators, but also for the students we instruct.
Ultimately, teaching for global competence does not require a new curriculum. Instead, it requires combining instructional strategies for active learning with a worldwide context and threading them into preexisting curriculums. Some of the instructional strategies already being used include structured student debates, organized discussions, learning from play, and even service-based learning.
Though a new curriculum is unnecessary, having strong, globally competent educators requires new initiatives. The College of Education at NC State University and other collaborative platforms worldwide are leading these initiatives, and they operate with the understanding that fortifying a society whose members can value and understand differing perspectives is consequential work. Contributing to this critical effort that is proven to enhance student’s education will also allow this work to reverberate for future generations.
Editor’s Note: The Anonymous Trust supports the work of EdNC.
