What Does Global Awareness and Cooperation Look Like?

Here are some questions asked by one educator after viewing my rants against the global citizen first movement. "How can we support teachers in making the connections for these [global] collaborations? How can we look at our curriculum and determine where these types of collaborative conversations fit well and support the learning taking place in our schools?" These are good questions, and I will try to give you a concrete example of how to get a handle on some of these global issues and support our teachers.

Another of Rischard's 20 global crises is deforestation particularly the destruction of tropical rain forests. How do we stop a country like Costa Rica from destroying its tropical rain forests? These forests are important for many reasons including the number of medicinal drugs that come from plants in these rain forests.
Check out this site: Welcome to the Rain Forest.

There is a technology integrated lesson plan that comes from EasyTech (adopted Technology Applications TEKS curriculum in the El Paso Independent School District) called Bake Sale Spreadsheet. One of the introductory activities to this math lesson plan is to read a chapter from the book It's Our World Too! by Phillip Hoose entitled "Founders of the Children's Rain Forest," pp. 83-93. It tells the story of how "forty first and second grade students from a small school in Sweden became upset when their teacher told them that rain forests were being destroyed rapidly throughout the world. They wondered what they -- so young, so few, and so far away from the tropics -- could do that could really matter. Their answer has helped to preserve rain forests around the world." What the children decided to do was raise money to buy rain forest land in Costa Rica to preserve these forests. You can check out their story here: Dream the Forest Wild.

From this introductory activity, the lesson plan calls for students to create a bake sale spreadsheet to calculate how much money they could raise. Of course, the extension for this lesson suggests that students actually do a project to raise money for saving the rain forests or some other worthy cause. Here is a handle to help our students to develop global awareness and support our teachers in this effort. Notice that we are using the tools of technology to help our students achieve these academic goals. Also notice that a GIN panel of global experts was not needed to come up with a solution  to the crisis or to pressure these students to act. What we need are globally aware citizens of sovereign states to step up to the plate. It is our responsibility as educators to help our students become globally aware, NOT to indoctrinate them in the political mindset to become Global Citizens First!