EKİN YAŞİN

Today more than ever I see the need to further transform the classroom from simply a space of learning into a space where we practice global citizenry. This need is in part a response to constantly changing diverse make-up of students and teachers. It is also a response to changing political climates all around the world. Classrooms can be a space where we can practice how to be active in conversation and debate.

I started fascilitating workshops and conversations about my work on global classrooms. On January 20 2017, I gave the keynote address at the Praxis Conference at University of Washington where I shared with the participant justifications and models for global classrooms. At the end of the session I asked participants to colloborate with me to create a global classroom manifesto together. This manifesto includes basic rules of this global space that we came up as a collective. This manifesto shows particularly the value of incorporating multiple perspectives and languages, the value of students’ agency and also provides models of how to create open and engaging learning spaces.

I thank all the participants of the conference for their brilliant contributions and in help creating the first version of this manifesto. I encourage all to read through items and find inspiration to adopt some of these manifesto items as they design/teach classes. The manifesto ends with a statement that the idea of a global classroom is for now an aspiration and not yet a reality. My work moving forward will be to push for ways where these guidelines are understood as some of the core principles of all our classes.

A global classroom …

• always encourages interest, awareness, and a deeper understanding of issues that students might or might not be familiar with (curiosity)
• incorporates structural analysis: provides and analyzes contexts
• teaches students to recognize and negotiate discomfort
• deconstructs normalized forms of learning and teaching, and questions power hierarchies within these forms
• incorporates technology/media in a way that is critically and socially engaged
• includes case-studies that are global
• meets students where they are in terms of their beliefs/culture
• does not impose teacher’s ideology
• encourages students to write in their native language
• has a translingual approach
• is a space where all languages are valued. In practice, this means allowing students to research, read and interpret in languages other than English
• has altered participation expectations
• realizes that every student and every class is at once unique but also subject to similar forces in their lives
• causes one to question oneself: “Why do I think this way?”
• chooses kindness, accountability and love
• centers knowledge and skills building as the mission and the diverse, contradictory, expansive and fragmented experience of the individuals in the room as ASSET for achieving the mission
• provides a space for students to engage themselves and each other in conversations that matter to them
• is like an airport: a hub for people from all over the world to meet, find their jouirneys and embark on them
• celebrates and highlights differences in perspective, belief, and culture
• not only recognizes and acknowledges difference, but actively incorporates it into the curriculum
• is multilingual – students can communicate with each other in the language of their choice
• recognizes different definitions of creativity and intellectual/professional engagement
• values how language structures lived experience, and students should be encouraged to access all of these languages in their work
• celebrates student agency
• is one that allows space for different modes of creativity- led by students
• moves one from socialized mind to self-authoring mind (read Robert Kegan)
• moves one from technical rationality to the reflective practictioner
• moves one from adaptation to adaptive capacity
• is a space where we explicitly acknowledge and engage with the experiences and perspectives of people from diverse, international communities
• is one in which the teacher models respect for diversity in the way she/he treats the individual students in the class with respect and attention
• acknowledges the differing values people have to want towards technology (access, training, etc.) -and it is a space where technology is uses as a means to education, not as end
• makes space for students to assert their voices and experiences
• asks students to pick a cause and act on it
• moves beyond binary thinking
• is speculative and interactive
• is relevant beyond the classroom
• includes colloborative projects with real stakes + shared responsibilities
• connects who students are and where they come from to what they are learning and what they hope to do with what they learn
• scaffolds ways for students to become self-aware so that they can to listen to and learn from each other
• is one in which comparative cultural insight helps students to contextualize their experiences and assumptions as local
• is always changing – it is fluid
• is a safe space – for many voices to be heard
• seeks to respect and share difference in service of difference and commonalities
• actively looks for students to recognize their own knowledge and authority.
• accepts that we can’t know everyone’s experience
• is an open space for different kinds of learning and participating
• explicitly connects ideas of “global classroom” to the specific learning goals/intellectual work of the course
• is an aspiration , not a reality.