Your Name and Title:
Rita Oates, PhD, Vice President, Education
School or Organization Name:
ePals
Co-Presenter Name(s):
Area of the World from Which You Will Present:
USA/Eastern Time Zone
Language in Which You Will Present:
English
Target Audience(s):
District, state, country leadership and policy makers; lead teachers; school site administrators
Short Session Description (one line):
How can you maximize global learning opportunities present in your community? In the familes of ELL students and in tools to connect them to school?
Full Session Description (as long as you would like):
Evidence of globalization is all around us, yet few of these powerful opportunities are leveraged. School policies may be partly to blame; lack of vision and communication are most commonly the problem.
When ELL students come to a school, how do parents and teachers communicate? If they don't speak the same language, it's a challenge. If teachers don't understand the culture of the new student, that can add to problems.
This session focuses on concrete ideas and actions that can enable increased respect, understanding and empathy for all students in the school. Rather than saying, "That child doesn't know much English," the assets and knowlege of another place, of another way of life, offer immense opportunities for this child to be sharing with classmates and the school. More than "food and festivals," cross cultural sharing can start in a couple of data collection exercises for students. One is to document where all their items of clothing were made and plot that on a chart and a map. Another is to divide up aisles of the grocery store and document where food came from and plot that on a chart and a map. This will help to increase awareness of globalization of commerce, especially in the most developed countries.
Parents of children who do not speak English (as the major language of the country) can increase communication with teachers through digital tools such as ePals SchoolMail. This offers translation to 58 languages at no charge to the school or parent. English-speaking students who are learning a new language can practice by reading news online, listening to audio clips, and exchanging information with new online friends found through a safe social learning network such as ePals.
Students can participate as global citizens in the ePals Student Forums, where they can ask and answer questions that interest them and translate them to 58 languages. Reading answers from students from many other countries increases empathy and awareness of how similar our concerns and our joys are, across boundaries and continents. Teachers can be encouraged to add global components to existing coursework and assignments.
Viewing and listening to the products created by other students in the ePals Student Media Gallery: http://bit.ly/StMedia provides a reality check for one's own work. How strong were the arguments against climate change from the students in another country? How persuasive were the comments about water? How entertaining were the stories told digitally? Was the second language learner's writing better than my own?
Immigrant parents can be a powerful opportunity to expand learning in our schools, and we need to think creatively about how to involve them and how to help them benefit from the experience as well.These strategies need to be modeled in ongoing ways and documented for future reference.
Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:
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