Global Education Summit 2019 | Cabarrus County Schools

Dana Griffin

This Is My Home Now Film and Panel Discussion

Sun Bujri, Mai Butrang and Mariah Dunn Kramer

This session will assess teachers’ comfort levels with global perspectives and cultural components of science topics. From there, the instructor will facilitate a conversation to share experiences and conclude with classroom examples of global/cultural integration in all science disciplines. The session will be collaborative in nature and is meant to start a conversation for how to teach values, skills, language and respect for diversity in what is traditionally a quantitative and right/wrong discipline of study. Ideas for science lessons at all levels will be welcomed and shared!

This session will focus on how we can help craft our students’ world view through the lens of service learning. In the process, we will discover that service learning attaches a purpose to the tasks that students are asked to do, and generates a high level of student engagement. This session will also discuss how we can coordinate service learning projects across subject areas in schools so that we include standards from all academic areas.

The class of Spanish for Native Speakers was invited to start a mentorship program with a neighbor middle school. This project has provided a support system for all students involved. In this session, the presenter will encourage teachers to identify which elements of their curriculum can contribute to actual needs of our community. Teachers will be invited to think of themselves as elements of change and progress for our county. They will also gain an awareness of the amount of Hispanic students and Hispanic culture in our district.

This session will teach educators about the evolution of music through the use of world drums while teaching them basic rhythms and melodies for performance.

This session will teach strategies to support immigrant students and their families. The presenters will share data, what has worked and the challenges faced to support the 82 languages of the diverse English Learner student population in Cabarrus County Schools. They will also cover cultural pedagogy, immigration law and policy and the challenges of becoming a US citizen. Are you confused about the difference between asylum and refugee? Do you know the visa options for stakeholders? Attendees will leave with a strengthened understanding of the immense challenges immigrant students face with cultural assimilation during these politically charged times. Resources will be provided including a guideline to create a strategic plan to support immigrant students and stakeholders.

Participants will develop an understanding of service learning and “glocalization.” Participants will explore a service learning project completed at CHS and begin to develop a plan for initiating a service learning project in their school.

Join this session to learn about global resources and cross-curricular art and cultural activities, like teaching culture through mandalas, Day of the Dead and Alebrijes. The session will also explore the Global Digital Educator Badge process and more. Teachers will have access to adaptable culture and art activities and ideas for cross-curricular collaborations (art, language, history, math, science, dance, music, drafting, etc.).

Immerse your students in real world geography by using Google’s tools. Students can virtually explore famous battlegrounds, world monuments, national parks or make a text come to life by using Google Cardboard and customized expeditions. Come to this hands on session to learn how to go beyond the walls of your classroom. It is great for all content areas.

This session will explore the benefits of multilingualism, review some useful terminology and explore various second language acquisition theories. The presenter will explore the nuances around the term “language”; many times teachers think it refers only to foreign languages, but actually, language is the instrument we use to communicate with others and interact, think and relate to other people and our environment. Participants will explore the policies and protocols in international schools and talk about the language teacher classroom.

Picture books are powerful pathways to learn, understand and embrace the world around us. We’ll learn how characters’ experiences found in picture books can serve as mirrors that reflect and reaffirm students’ culture and experiences. We’ll also learn how picture books serve as windows to an unknown world that nurtures empathy and passion for a global mindset. Through a modeled lesson and examples, participants will learn how to analyze and incorporate picture books in lessons that support reading, writing, listening and academic discourse. We’ll be creating our own book using WriteReader app as a platform to share our own stories and reflections after reading diverse picture books.

Participants will have access to songs they can use for their students. Participants will learn about resources teaching cultural sensitivity and responsiveness to the variety of cultures represented in their student population. Finally, participants will learn about the pedagogical process for teaching a song in a foreign language.

Sixty percent of North Carolina Latinos are of Mexican origin. For this reason, it is undeniably important to teach about Mexico in the classroom. But how can educators teach about the countries of origin of the other forty percent of NC Latinos? This session will provide information, lessons and resources for educators to teach about other Latin American and Caribbean counties with connections to NC.

Art helps us grow and evolve in our understanding of ourselves, each other and the world we live in. This interactive session will enhance understanding of the Middle East through a cultural arts perspective, explore how the arts can increase global competence and include lessons and resources for teaching about the Middle East in the K-12 classroom.

This session will focus on recent trends in Asian immigration to North Carolina and the US as well as immigrant communities and diaspora in the world. The speaker will include her personal history. The unit encourages students to research and develop a better understanding of migration and immigrant communities using online sources (i.e. data from the Migration Policy Institute).

This session is an inquiry into the exit project for the IB Primary Years Programme called the Exhibition. Develop learner agency through voice, choice and ownership through an open-ended mini-inquiry of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn how fifth grade students designed their own Non-Government Organizations, developed plans for taking action to address local and global issues and used multimedia to share with the school community. The research process and student examples will be also shared.

Our cultural experiences and values shape the ways we see ourselves and what we think is important. Cultural perspectives influence how we parent, how we understand children and how we educate them. This session looks at influences related to cultural diversity that may affect the social and emotional development and wellbeing of children from cultural and linguistically diverse backgrounds. This session will help educators see that our world is diverse and beautiful, and educators can teach about its different ways by learning the importance of cultural diversity, the effects of trauma, barriers to communication and more.

When integrating reading and social studies units on cultural diversity, economics and geography, students focus on several countries within a continent. By engaging in activities where they compare and study different types of maps, students can glean a world of information about a country’s population, languages spoken, landforms, goods and services produced, etc., from sources that are appropriate and non-threatening. The directions that a teacher can take this information are diverse: reading and writing responses, connections to the environment, biological diversity, specific cultural studies, folktales and/or local storytelling styles – even mathematical exercises that incorporate numerical data. Teachers can easily make data and information obtained from their map studies as integrated and adaptive as their curriculum – and imagination – allows!

Mathematics? Global? Do those two words really belong in the same title? Yes! Mathematics helps explain our world. Global inequality and inequalities can be tied together to study rates and populations and compare them, analyze them and understand commonalities and differences among them. Not only can global instruction be easily incorporated into mathematics, but mathematics is a global function of understanding our world.

Integrating global experiences in classroom practices enriches our students’ capacity to be reflective global citizens and create a positive impact on the world. This session will provide a two-part opportunity for educators to learn about the benefit of global awareness in art classrooms and how authentic global experiences have shaped whole-school service learning and international mindedness.

This session will explore how to incorporate fiction and nonfiction texts in the classroom that focus on human rights issues on a global scale. By reading and understanding these global issues, students will gain an enhanced perspective on these issues. Students will learn how to read and think critically about human rights, looking specifically at the United Nations Rights of the Child. Students will use their new perspective as a catalyst for change by analyzing possible solutions for these global issues.

After teaching a unit on human rights issues, I became aware of how little students knew – and in some instances, cared – about human rights issues around the world. The general perception was often, “Well, I can’t do anything about it, so why should I care?” The need for empathy in education is so strongly highlighted, but how do we teach that? The answer lies in empowering students to be solution creators. This session will showcase lessons that provide opportunities for students to critically think about human rights issues, develop empathy for those involved and inspire them to propose solutions for the problems. It will provide hope and tangible activities for educators in guiding students to being more empathetic problem solvers in the real world.

In this session, teachers will learn about the current Danish Exchange program through Central Cabarrus High School and the amazing avenues and opportunities this opened for students and staff. In addition, teachers will learn of the benefits of high school exchange programs through both the student and teacher perspective, along with the logistics on how to run an exchange program through Cabarrus County Schools.

The presenters will explore how the International Baccalaureate Program’s curriculum teaches students to view knowledge through ways of knowing, areas of knowledge and real life situations. We will deliver a lesson asking the audience to bring in current global issues, summarize in the TOK presentation framework, create series of knowledge questions and make connections across at least two other areas of knowledge. The audience will be asked to share their TOK presentation with whole group.

Human connection is the driving force in student success. The connection between a teacher and their student and the connection between a teacher and their students’ parents are all bridged by common language. In this session you will learn how one travel abroad experience inspired an innovative approach to sharing and promoting language throughout a school and into the community.