Creating global citizens

Teaching students about the greater world and themselves

It happened during a trip to Bhutan said Garth Nichols. At a Buddhist temple, their guide was explaining to Havergal College students how everyone should walk in the same clockwise direction.

In the Himalayan kingdom, located north of India, there is a lack of elder care, so many seniors will spend their time out in the community, including at temples. The humorous guide told the students to walk clockwise, said Nichols, so they didn’t knock down any seniors.

“Our students thought that was really funny, but then they began questioning what is the experience of elderly care that we have at home that we don’t have in Bhutan,” said Nichols, the vice principal of experiential education and innovation at Torontobased Havergal.

“We took this lighthearted moment and then really started to dig into our own culture and our expectations in our culture around the elderly versus that in Bhutan,” he said. “It was a great moment, because that really is the whole point — to question and the be curious about how you feel about the lives of others.”

That ability to learn and grow from your experiences, Nichols said, is part of the international-focused educational programing at Havergal — an all-girls private school offering classes from junior kindergarten through Grade 12 — to help turn their students into global citizens.

Along with global learning projects, like the trip to Bhutan, the school offers Grade 8 and 10 students a chance to go on an educational exchange for a few weeks in another country — the U.K. for the younger ones and anywhere from Argentina to New Zealand for older students. Nichols said that during these exchanges, the students live with local families, go to local schools and immerse themselves into the local cultures — all with the goal of teaching them about different perspectives, experiences and worldviews.

“When we go out in the world, we are holding ourselves in a position of curiosity, the position of an observer, and in that way, we are gaining knowledge, skills and dispositions — this idea that we can think differently and act differently and see things through different lenses,” he said.

“You are more likely to consider the experiences of others in your own action.”

Havergal is among a number of private schools offering programs designed to educate their students about the larger world by exposing them to different ways of thinking, cultural perspectives and international events and concerns.

Julia Hunt is the assistant head of school and senior director of strategic innovation at Pickering College. She said the Newmarket-located private institution, which opened its doors in 1840s and is the only Quaker-founded school in Canada, aims to instil in its 500 students the skills and confidence to feel they are connected to, and can create change in, the world.

Just over a decade ago, she said, Pickering launched its Global Leadership Program for students that builds off the school’s founding Quaker beliefs in social justice and being engaged with the world.

“It’s aim is to give students the skills, the ability and the interest to make change in the world,” Hunt said. “Where our program stands out is that it is built around taking action. We will often see programs that have students create examples of what should be done, but what we really want our students to do is to actually go out there and do these projects.”

While this goal extends to students from kindergarten to Grade 12 — teaching them they have the abilities, skills and resources to make change no matter what their age — it is those in their final year who put these teachings into practice. Each of the 65 to 70 students in the graduating class spend their final year at Pickering working on a Capstone Project of their own choosing.

“It is a lot for us to manage, but it is also really exciting because they can go in any direction they want,” Hunt said. Those projects might look at a possible solution to an issue in their community or the wider world, she said, or just be meant to educate others about a topic that a student cares about.

For example, recently some students looked at textile waste in the clothing industry. As part of the project, they held a fashion show featuring local designers who use sustainable materials. With the money raised through the event, they bought the school two sewing machines so future students could make and mend their own clothing.

“They also created a school grad tie — we wear uniforms — that was made from sustainable materials and students will keep forever,” said Hunt. “Because they were so passionate about the subject, the other students really bought into it, and it had a huge response from the rest of the school.”

The Blyth Academy, a co-ed private day school that operates 10 campuses in Ontario, has the motto that it is “shaping the world,” but in many ways, the world is being used to shape its students said Kathy Young, its chief academic officer.

Her school is one of two in Canada — the other is Toronto Prep School — that is part of Globeducate, a network of 55 international educational institutions across 12 countries, including Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, India and Malaysia.

Students at Blyth have the opportunity to attend — in person and virtually — events with their counterparts from schools around the world. This includes events like a model United Nations, an arts competition, leadership summits and global debates.

“I think they are learning that the world is a big place. I think they are learning that we have lots in common with our fellow students and our different cultures. I think we are learning about our differences; tolerance and respect, justice and equity,” Young said.

“I am hoping that fundamentally it broadens their experiences, and it makes them more open, more interested and more willing to travel to other parts of the world to learn.”

And, said Hunt, the goal of global education is to allow students, like those at her school, Pickering, an opportunity to also discover something about themselves.

“I hope the number one thing they learn is that they have a lot of resources at their fingertips, even when they feel that they don’t. They develop life skills,” she said. “We want to show them they can do it here, so when they go out in the world, they know they can do it there as well.”