The International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) connects more than 30,000 secondary schools and learning organisations in 140 countries to collaborate on virtual learning projects. Tonya Muro, executive director of the US office, explains why teachers should be at the centre of global learning and how K-12 international education has changed over the last two decades.
The PIE: What do virtual exchanges through iEARN look like?
TM: It is called virtual exchange because we believe that the students and teachers can have a meaningful, technology enabled, people-to-people sustained education program through public diplomacy even if they don’t get to meet in person. This speaks to issues of equity and access, especially in some of the most remote parts of the world.
It is great because it is culturally relevant to each country, but then there is cross cultural functionality because the teachers from around the world will pitch a project on the online space, called the collaboration centre, around any number of topics related to any part of the curriculum and the UN sustainable goals. It is almost like a global Match.com for teachers. So a teacher will say, “Hey, I am doing a project on solar cooking in Algeria and I would really love it if folks in other countries would join me.”
“We believe students and teachers can have a meaningful, sustained education program through public diplomacy even if they don’t get to meet in person”
The virtual exchange is going to be even more important because in this current political climate we don’t know what is going to happen with the US State Department. We don’t know what will happen to the physical exchanges right now, so we are really trying to create more opportunities through various funding means to get people connected virtually.
The PIE: How many countries and projects are on the platform?
TM: Some of our projects have 30 countries on them, some have five, some have two. It depends on the interest level. We have over a hundred projects and they are all teacher led, teacher supported and teacher created so we are the guys on the side. We convene and curate. We don’t want to create content because we don’t want to impose that on the teachers, although we are educated as well if they need help.
The PIE: What challenges do K-12 teachers face in creating a global classroom?
TM: It is very difficult. I think to implement anything that is considered different, innovative or outside of what is going to be good for the tests in many many schools has been very hard.
At iEARN we work more with the independent schools, the chartered schools, private schools. But there is still a huge place in public school education, because if you can speak to the right teacher then normally that teacher becomes the champion. From the bottom up they are able to influence their administration.
We find that we cannot usually go directly to districts or superintendents unless they have decided that global learning is part of their own mandate. But at ministries of education in different countries around the world it is actually a lot easier for them to use iEARN because they have fewer restrictions. The good thing about iEARN is that it is flexible, adaptable and nimble.
If teachers are already teaching a class in science, on soil science or environmental science, for example, and they want to do a global perspective, they can basically take a section of their own curriculum, put in something and then make it something virtual. And then it is already seamlessly integrated. So that is how we have also been able to work in public schools. We say to teachers: do you want to do something a little bit different to what you are already doing? Just readapt a lesson plan, tweak it, we can help you and then you can pitch it to other schools.
I think that is why we have been able to sustain ourselves because we keep encouraging teachers to meet them where they are at. We are also trying to work more with teacher training colleges and there are feeder systems through universities that are working with school districts as a way to bridge that gap.
“If you can speak to the right teacher then normally that teacher becomes the champion; from the bottom up they are able to influence their administration”
The PIE: It is interesting you say that because a lot of times in global education discussions, it is often about students or policy items and mobility in general but teachers are left out.
TM: They are the ones in the driver’s seat. We are trying to help teachers more with professional development, to help train them in the art and science, the pedagogy of what it means to be a facilitator of virtual exchange, because a lot of teachers don’t even know what that means. Does that mean I just call another teacher on Skype? No. There is really a practice to it.
I think there are several pathways to get to global learning, it’s not one size fits all. So we work with a lot of partners to try to figure out how to create these experiences but also have teachers become proficient at what it means to be a facilitator of virtual exchange. We really try to make the teacher the champion of their own empowerment.
The PIE: Most people would be quite familiar with the evolution of global education at the tertiary level but how have you seen demand at the K-12 level develop over the past two decades?
TM: I think 20 years ago there wasn’t a concept called global education. It just didn’t exist. Now I think teachers are realising more and more, how do we find our place in the world and how do we find our students’ place in the world and how critically important it is because of globalisation – that has really been the tipping point. But at the same time, there are many people who are resistant to that change even though they know it is an indispensable part of education now. They don’t want to do it because they just want to stick to the text and what they are asked to teach.
But I think more and more teachers are realising that because we are a more diverse community, because we have so many immigrants, especially in this country, so many teachers realise the importance of our neighbours from the Middle East and North Africa, especially right now, that it is critical to our own sustainability as humanity. I think that globalisation has really started a change of the narrative in and around global education.
The PIE: What impact have you seen in the students who have learned through a program on iEARN?
TM: We are seeing a huge percentage of students who participate in these global learning experiences who then want to go into the workforce in some kind of global job or public diplomacy or international relations or government service. Even if it is in a business, something globally related. So I think there is direct tie, I wouldn’t say it is overwhelming, but it is definitely increasing.
The PIE: Which project currently on iEARN really stands out and is exciting to you?
TM: It is called ‘Finding Solutions to Hunger, Poverty and Equality,’ and it is a partnership with this married couple in New York City. It was called ‘Kids Make A Difference’ and then they joined with several hunger-focused NGOs, so it’s a consortium of different partners. It is an amazing project and it is probably our number one project because it is looking at all of the world right now and how hunger affects everybody everywhere, we just don’t realise it.
It lends itself to cross cultural engagement because it asks what does hunger look like in your community as opposed to mine? What does inequality look like? What does it mean to live on less than a dollar a day?
We also have a really exciting project which I love called ‘Hip Hop on the Spot’. This woman from Brazil is a hip hop artist and she decided she wanted to create a project where she would start one line of a rap song around global issues and then almost like volleyball or hot potato, have somebody in another country take the thread and go back and forth. There is this incredible video and it is literally a collaborative global rap from 20 countries based on one line here, one line there, one line here.
“I think globalisation has really started a change of the narrative in and around global education”
The PIE: Is there any country, outside of the US, that is more active on iEARN than another?
TM: iEARN Pakistan is one of our most active partners, iEARN Argentina, iEARN Morocco, iEARN Tunisia. Some of them really stand out in activity, but a lot of them come in and out of activity based on what is happening.
The PIE: Like politically in the country?
TM: Yes, and also just funding and what is happening at the time.
The PIE: How much is advocacy for a global education part of your work? And how has that advocacy changed in the US since last November?
TM: In our messaging work and social media we are trying to create campaigns around each project that shows how critically important global education is to our survival. You can do it in different ways, you don’t have to be anti-establishment. You don’t have to be anti the political scene.
We are trying to tie our advocacy into things that are popular in the discourse right now with the mainstream, for example fake news and alternative news sources. We are trying to create critical thinkers and global citizens and part of that is the advocacy work to show that global learning is going to help you be factual because you have to go to primary sources and that is often leading you to different countries and their news and what they are doing.
It’s to show them to not just get one perspective that is going to make you fear the other, or have more ethnocentrism or more xenophobia.
