For Global Schools...

1. Start language teaching programs in your pre-K, kindergarten, and primary schools.
2. Include global education in your school’s mission statement.
3. Connect with overseas schools on the Internet.
4. Participate in NAIS’s Challenge 20/20 Program.
5. Elementary schools can organize exchanges with schools in other countries: one parent and one child spend a week with a host family, then host that same family.
6. Read High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them by J.F. Rischard and The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman.
7. Start an international parents group that includes all parents with international experience.
8. Teach conflict resolution and ethical leadership.
9. Promote summer travel grants for teachers.
10. Start a Mandarin, Arabic, or Hindi language program.
11. Recruit international students.
12. Create a volunteer parent support group for international students and their families.
13. Attend the NAIS Global Education Summit.
14. Invite dignitaries from other countries to visit the campus and meet faculty and students.
15. Create an annual speaker series with global topics.
16. Offer a cultural anthropology course, and expect students, teachers, administrators, and staff to model respect for all peoples and cultures.
17. Educate and encourage parents to support school initiatives that promote global understanding.
18. Put sustainability in your school’s strategic plan.
19. Hold an international/World’s Fair day at your elementary school.   
20. Require a second foreign language for your students.
21. Learn about the International Baccalaureate Programs.
22. Implement a shadow teacher exchange.
23. Hire international faculty through the Fulbright Program.
24. Organize service-learning trips and global sustainability trips for students during spring and summer breaks.
25. Attend global events at local colleges and universities.
26. Hold a global education conference at your school.
27. Put global elements in your curriculum.
28. Send a delegation to the NAIS Institute for Student Leaders.
29. If your school has an idea that is "working" – share your model of global sustainability. Click here to share your program with NAIS and member schools.
30. Start a partnership program with a school in another country.
31. Promote longer-term teacher exchanges.
32. Conduct summer study trips to other countries.
33. Participate in School Year Abroad or other long-term overseas study.
34. Create partnerships with non-governmental organizations in other countries.
35. Host overseas visitors for short- and long-term stays.
36. Hold a “Global Day” for all students with a different theme each year.
37. Create a partnership with the nearest World Affairs or Council on Foreign Relations.
38. Participate in Model UN, Global Quest, and Model Interdependency Programs.
39. Forge bonds with international communities in your town.
40. Teach comparative politics and host related field trips.
41. Seek diversity of cultural, national, and ethnic backgrounds in teachers and administrators.
42. Get connected through Virtual Collaboratory and social networking (blogs, wikipedia, etc).
43. Teach global trade and economics.
44. Encourage students to participate in a summer language immersion program.
45. Learn about the World Affairs Challenge at the University of Denver.
46. Think about adding some SPICE to your life. (Stanford Program on International and Cross Cultural Education)
47. Organize an international club.
48. Raise funds for a charity in a developing country.
49. Take your faculty members on an education tour to another country.
50. Create an e-learning community with other schools.

For Green Schools...

1. Adopt an environmental mission statement for your school.
2. Buy food from local farmers and vendors.
3. Install solar panels on your campus.
4. Make people aware of your school’s energy use by posting monthly usage data for public viewing (or make a real-time display).
5. Create an environmental stewardship committee on the board of trustees.
6. Start a school garden with students and serve food from it at school meals or functions.
7. Turn off all unnecessary electrical appliances over vacations and weekends.
8. Join an energy competition among independent schools.
9. Invite the local community to hear outside speakers present on environmental and sustainability topics.
10. Invest in a recycling program involving the entire school community.
11. Lower the school’s thermostat by 15 (ok, just kidding! How about a few?) degrees this winter.
12. Buy office paper with significant recycled content and make it a policy to print and copy double-sided whenever possible.
13. Share subscriptions of publications with colleagues to limit duplication (and facilitate inter-departmental conversation).
14. Buy environmentally safe/biodegradable cleaning products.
15. Adjust staff maintenance schedules so buildings are not running with only one person in them.
16. Encourage carpooling by offering incentives to staff and parents.
17. Educate trustees, parents, and alumni about your sustainability initiatives to create broader understanding and consensus.
18. Create an outdoor adventure education program at your school to give students and staff hands-on experiences in nature.
19. Offset your school’s carbon footprint by planting trees.
20. Join the U.S. Partnership for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) and be part of a growing international conversation.
21. Use the school property to hold a farmers market for the local community.
22. Start a composting operation.
23. Renovate buildings instead of constructing new ones.
24. Take your students, faculty, and staff to the local landfill or transfer station to educate about where their waste is going.
25. Install water-efficient lavatories and sinks.
26. Create an environmental or sustainability task force/committee at your school.
27. Turn your campus into a “living green classroom.”
28. Buy organic and fair trade food whenever possible.
29. Have your students work in the dining hall so that they understand how much food is wasted (and they can learn to cook!). 
30. Start a biodiesel plant at your school and use it in the chemistry curriculum.
31. Phase in energy-efficient light bulbs at your school.
32. Purchase wind energy credits from a provider in your area.
33. Contract with an energy services provider to optimize campus energy use and save money.
34. Use the United States Green Building Council’s LEED Certification program when planning, building, and renovating your campus infrastructure.
35. Work with other schools on cooperative purchasing of green products to encourage your vendors to be more competitive with virgin, recycled, local, and non-toxic materials.
36. Extend the “life-cycle” of the products that come to your school so that there is less need for new products.
37. Use fuel-efficient and/or biodiesel school vehicles.
38. Install “low-flow” showers in your locker rooms and/or dormitories.
39. Visit a “living machine” natural wastewater treatment plant.
40. Keep students and faculty informed about important environmental legislation.
41. Be aware of political trends related to the environment.
42. Partner with local officials to support smart development in the community and get students, faculty, and staff involved.
43. Use environmentally safe turf and pest control products on your athletic fields.
44. Restore one area of the campus landscape as an ecological experiment.
45. Remove invasive species on your campus and replace them with native species.
46. Plant a garden of native plants as part of a school project.
47. Cultivate a “sense of place” among faculty and students and teach the development and environmental history of the community and region in which the school sits.
48. Practice “green chemistry” in the sciences.
49. Introduce a course on sustainable development and encourage faculty members to incorporate environmental and sustainability topics in existing courses.
50. Hold one-day faculty development workshops on environmental and sustainability issues in the curriculum.
51. Check this website periodically for more ideas.

Our thanks to Charlotte Country Day School (NC), Collegiate School (NY), St. Timothy’s School (MD), La Jolla Country Day School (CA), St. Paul’s School (NH), the Round Square schools, and others for their contributions to this list.