01/21/2024
Schools love to use the catchphrase “creating students prepared for our increasingly globalized world”, yet sadly American (and many global) world language and humanities curricula need to go further in terms of examining perceptions of what life in other places on the globe is like.
Blew my Nepali yoga teacher’s mind last night by explaining to him that it was for sure safer to make a 15 min walk alone after dark in Pokhara than Philly. I had to include several gun popping hand motions and a very broken English explanation of what Fentanyl is for him to wrap his head around how the images of America people see around the globe hide many realities. It works the same way for me; I’ve been surprised time and time again to find the reality of places I have visited far different than the culturally conditioned image of them my mind created before I arrived.
I still love teaching, but I was feeling less and less able to see the “why” within the school systems within which I found myself. I am truly glad I took this time away from the traditional classroom to regroup and center my values. I’m still searching for like minded teachers / progressive school communities / who hold this type of learning as a priority and are interested in collaborating on what this type of learning looks like in the 21st Century and am confident we will find one another and create something great.
