Browse By Topic - Global awareness

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Articles

101 Ways To Go Global and Green
Click on the link below to download a colorful poster that encourages your campus community to go green with simple steps anyone can take.

11 Commandments for Successful Fund Raising with Parents of International Students
This document lists ideas for successful fund raising with parents of international students. It is a document written by the president of Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall School (Massachusetts).

Administration, Mission, and Planning
This web page offers links to articles, advisories, and PowerPoint presentations about model environmentally sustainable practices, specifically in the area of administration, mission, and planning.

Administration, Mission, and Planning
Read this to learn more about the mission and planning behind several model school programs in environmental sustainability.

An American School in a Flat World
Click on the link below to view the PowerPoint presentation Paul Fochtman, superintendent of the American School of Bombay (India), made to the attendees of the NAIS Delegation for Diversity, India, program.

An Outcomes-Based Approach to Global Education
Argument in favor of backward design in global education: Start with the premise of producing global citizens and list attributes that would define such citizenship; then design curriculum and other activities to produce the desired outcomes.

Around the World in 80 Conundrums
This presentation presents the leadership challenges facing independent schools worldwide. While each country and culture faces unique issues, it is remarkable to note and consider how universal most of the leadership and educational conundrums are. The session will address NAIS’s five "sustainable schools" themes (demographics, environment, globalism, program, and finance) and identify "brutal facts" and "inevitable surprises" all schools will face.

Assessing Environmental Sustainability at Your School
Conducting a campus sustainability assessment is an important first step toward reducing your school’s carbon footprint, engaging in ongoing and effective planning, and improving your financial bottom-line. What are the benefits of a campus assessment (also known as an audit)? Click on the link below to find out.

Assessments, Audits, and Carbon Calculators
This web page offers links to organizations and websites that can help further school's environmentally sustainable practices, specifically in the area of assessments, carbon calculators, and audits.

Bassett Blog 2006/07-08: The Small Classes Debate
While the research and opinion on small classes is mixed and highly controversial, the independent school public still identifies "small classes" with high student achievement. Although NAIS marketing research indicates that "small classes" are a factor that drives parents to independent schools (i.e., giving us a "marketing edge"), educational research, finally, does not show that it's class size that drives student achievement.

Bassett Blog 2006/09: Buckminster Fuller's Leadership Principles
The September-October issue of The Futurist presented a retrospective of Buckminster Fuller’s gigantic contributions to philosophy, architecture (the geodesic dome), and the social change agenda, exploring in some detail Fuller’s Leadership Principles. It strikes me that there is much wisdom in this list of principles and that one could measure the legacy of a leader by the extent to which he or she lived by them and manifested them.

Bassett Blog 2006/12: Too Much Pressure and Too Little Time?
Ever since the publishing of The Over-Scheduled Child, conventional wisdom, especially in independent schools, has been that our kids' rising stress levels are exacerbated by their hectic schedules. Regardless of who is contributing to the cause (and the culprits we acknowledge seem to be faculty, parents, and students themselves, bent on more homework, more activities, and more AP courses), we have convinced ourselves of three things:

1. that kids are overscheduled;
2. that being so busy produces deleterious effects; and
3. that there is no way out of the dilemma.

Bringing Sustainability into Education — January/February 2006
This is the January/February 2006 environmental sustainability column by NAIS consultant on sustainability matters, Wynn Calder.

Campus Operations
This web page offers links to organizations and websites that can help further school's environmentally sustainable practices, specifically in the area of campus, facilities, and operations

Campus Operations
This web page offers links to articles, advisories, and PowerPoint presentations about model environmentally sustainable practices, specifically in the area of campus operations.

Campus Operations
Read this to learn more about the campus operations of several schools with model programs in environmental sustainability.

Climate Change, Sustainability Design, and Independent Schools
This is one of the presentations given at the 2008 Institute for Leadership in Sustainability by Rob Watson, CEO and chief scientist, EcoTech International, and founding chairman, LEED Steering Committee.

Common Obstacles and How to Overcome Them while Fostering Sustainability in Independent Schools
The following obstacles and suggested solutions are among the most common we have heard from independent school faculty and staff attempting to start or strengthen their sustainability efforts. In some cases, obstacles and challenges were described in different ways but seemed to revolve around one fundamental issue. In these instances we tried to summarize and present one primary obstacle to avoid repetition.

Community Outreach and Service
This web page offers links to organizations and websites that can help further school's environmentally sustainable practices, specifically in the area of community outreach and service.

Community Outreach and Service
This web page offers links to articles, advisories, and PowerPoint presentations about model environmentally sustainable practices, specifically in the area of community outreach and service.

Community Outreach and Service
Read this to learn more about the community outreach and service at several schools with model programs in environmental sustainability.

Confronting Climate Change on Campus
This is one of the presentations given at the 2008 Institute for Leadership in Sustainability by Wynn Calder, NAIS sustainability advisor, and Becca Leslie of Northfield Mount Hermon School (Massachusetts).

Curriculum
This web page offers links to organizations and websites that can help further school's environmentally sustainable practices, specifically in the area of curriculum.

Curriculum
This web page offers links to articles, advisories, and PowerPoint presentations about model environmentally sustainable practices, specifically in the area of curriculum.

Curriculum
Read this to learn more about the curriculum of several schools with model programs in environmental sustainability.

Delegation for Diversity Diary 2006, India - Day 3, Part 1
Day three, part one, of the NAIS Delegation for Diversity to India. The delegates spend the morning in a panel discussion with three top Indian thinkers.

Delegation for Diversity Diary 2006, India - Day 6
Day six of the NAIS Delegation for Diversity to India. The delegates go south and visit an extraordinary school for rural kids, then head east to two villages hit by the tsunami of 2004.

Delegation for Diversity Diary 2006, India - Day 7
Day seven of the NAIS Delegation for Diversity to India. The delegates get a day off.

Delegation for Diversity Diary 2006, India - Day 8
Day eight of the NAIS Delegation for Diversity to India. The delegates fly to the world's most populated city, Mumbai, and talk economics.

Delegation for Diversity Diary 2006, India - Day 9
Day nine of the NAIS Delegation for Diversity to India. The delegates visit the slums of Mumbai and a film school.

Educating 21st Century Global Citizens
Click here to view the PowerPoint presentation Paul Miller, NAIS director of global initiatives, gave on the benefits and necessity of educating our students to be global citizens in the 21st Century.

Educating Students for the Not-So-Flat Future
Click on the link below to view the PowerPoint presentation Andrew Hoover, assistant principal of the American School of Bombay (India), made to the attendees of the NAIS Delegation for Diversity, India, program.

Education for Sustainability
This is one of the presentations given at the 2007 Institute for Leadership in Sustainability by Wynn Calder, sustainability consultant to NAIS.

Education for Sustainability
Click here to view Wynn Calder's PowerPoint Presentation on education for sustainability. It includes daunting statistics as well as inspiration for us and our schools to improve the state of the planet.

Education for Sustainability: Responding to Our 21st Century Challenges
This is one of the presentations given at the 2008 Institute for Leadership in Sustainability by Charles Hopkins, UNESCO and UN university chair at York University in Toronto.

Global Citizenship Education: Curriculum Resources
The center is committed to cultivating a culture of peace by fostering education for global citizenship. They offer free online Curriculum Resources for Global Citizenship Education, which include 30 innovative curricula in all areas of learning with an emphasis on the secondary level. Math, science, literature, social studies, fine arts, conflict resolution, foreign language education, community building, and more are included.

Global Citizenship Imperatives and Initiatives
Click here to view the PowerPoint presentation that Paul Miller, NAIS director of global initiatives, made at the 2007 Leadership through Partnership workshop.

Global Problem-Solving in Action: NAIS's Challenge 20/20 Program
Learn how to apply for and participate in NAIS’s premier global education program, Challenge 20/20. The program matches one group of teachers/students in the U.S. with another group in another country. Together, they research one of the planet’s 20 most pressing problems and develop local and global solutions based on Jean-Francois Rischard’s seminal book, High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years To Solve Them. Program coordinators will learn the ins and outs to ensure a successful project that helps students build cross-cultural communication skills and practice teamwork and problem-solving.

Global Schools
A snapshot of where schools are in global education and thoughts about how to go further.

Go Green, Save Green
Go Green, Save Green makes the case for affordable sustainability. It is possible to demonstrate institutional and personal commitment to environmental sustainability without breaking the bank as the independent schools and colleges and universities described here exemplify. Much progress has been made at our schools over the past five years to walk the green talk, and to secure a permanent place for sustainability in their cultures and communities. Even with the extraordinary financial challenges before and ahead of us, now is not the time to pare back; rather, it’s the perfect opportunity to distinguish our schools even further as educational leaders.

Hot Topics: Trends and Road Signs along the Way
As background for NAIS’s five sustainability themes (demographic, environmental, global, programmatic, and financial sustainability), the presentation gives an executive summary of the research NAIS has gathered in its NAIS Opinion Leader Survey: Forecasting Independent Schools Education to 2015 (available on the NAIS website as a PDF file). The presentation also explores action steps schools should take now to develop a strategic vision to become a sustainable school.

How to Submit a Profile for Your School's Global Initiatives
This document provides detailed information about how to submit a profile for your school's global initiatives.

Improving Teaching and Learning
This PDF focuses on ways to improve teaching and learning, particularly in global education environments.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 1)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 10)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 11)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 12)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 13)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 14)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 2)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 3)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 4)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 6)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 7)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 8)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent School Projects to Help Victims of the South Asian Earthquake and Tsunami (Part 9)
The following school responses and project ideas were compiled from e-mail messages sent to NAIS by school personnel. Although this document will be updated regularly, it is not a comprehensive list of programs. Demographic information about each school was taken from the NAIS database.

Independent Schools and Global Education
Click below to view the PowerPoint presentation Paul Miller, NAIS director of global initiatives, made at the ACPA/NASPA Joint Meeting regarding the importance of independent schools embracing their role of educating 21st century global citizens and easy ways to enhance this goal.

Innovate or Wither: The Case for School Change
NAIS Financially Sustainable Schools Advisory: Economic uncertainty calls for schools to undertake vigorous strategic reconsideration of mission and program in order to meet both current and future challenges.

International Networking
This is a PowerPoint presentation created by Paul Miller, NAIS director of global initiatives.

It's (Not) Easy Being Green
As Kermit the Frog put it some 20 years ago, being green can seem like a daunting task for the average person. However, as the temperature of the earth continues to rise, being environmentally sustainable has become critical for citizens and business alike. Years ago, when there were fewer people and machines, the long-term impact of burning fossil fuels wasn’t clear. Now, as the world’s population continues to grow, technology must expand to support our way of life. Our increasing dependence on the use of fossil fuels to power businesses and homes, however, comes at a price to our health and the health or our planet. Still, there are simple steps that everyone can take to effectively deal with this issue.

Job Samples: Director of Global Education
This sample job description details the typical responsibilities of an independent school director of global education.

Model Environmentally Sustainable Schools
This document provides links to schools that model environmentally sustainable practices.

NAIS Global Schools: A Snapshot
Click the link below to view the PowerPoint presentation Paul Miller, NAIS director of global initiatives, made regarding the most current findings on global schools -- including what it means to be a global school.

NYSAIS Inclusion of “Sustainability” in Manual for Evaluation and Accreditation
The issue of sustainable environment appears several times in the NYSAIS Manual for Evaluation and Accreditation 2006.

Schools for Global Citizens
Click the link below to view a PowerPoint presentation created by Paul Miller, NAIS director of global initiatives.

Schools of the Future
NAIS’s president addresses the issues of “how schools fail kids” and why the current model of schooling is not working for many students. He then shares several competing “visions” of the school of the future. Finally he raises 15 “design issues” for educators to consider as they create their own schools of the future.

Strategic Communication in Times of Change
NAIS Financially Sustainable Schools Advisory: Christina Drouin, executive director of the Center for Strategic Planning, talks about 10 messages organizations should communicate to constituents during times of change.

Strategic Indicators and Tools for Schools
The president of NAIS presents an overview of the key trends that will impact schools in the next decade, including changing school-age demographics, the war for talent, the challenges of affordability and financially sustainable schools, the changing landscape of public schools, and the like. He will then demonstrate tools available on the NAIS website for member schools, including the Demographics Center and the School Financial Calculator.

Student Life
This web page offers links to organizations and websites that can help further school's environmentally sustainable practices, specifically in the area of student engagement.

Student Life
This web page offers links to articles, advisories, and PowerPoint presentations about model environmentally sustainable practices, specifically in the area of student life.

Sustainable Schools for the 21st Century
Thank you for your interest in profiling your school on the NAIS website. The purpose behind these profiles is to present independent school programs and innovations in education for environmental sustainability as examples for those who would like to learn more or to start their own initiatives.

Tentative Schedule, 2005 Sustainability Institute
This is a tentative schedule for the 2005 Sustainability Institute, to be held at Darrow School in New Lebanon, NY, June 22-26, 2005.

The Case for Creativity in 21st Century Schools
The president of NAIS develops the arguments from Dan Pink (A Whole New Mind), Sir Ken Robinson (Out of Our Minds: Learning To Be Creative), and Edward de Bono (Six Hats Thinking) to make the case for increased attention to teaching creativity and creative thinking for students, educators, and schools. He illustrates the point with exercises and examples of creative student “demonstrations of learning.”

The Clue Train: Taking Delivery from the Global Schoolhouse
The president of NAIS presents the "clues" we are receiving from global data on education in the U.S. vs. other westernized data and addresses four emerging themes: 1. The global achievement gap; 2. An international standard for testing and assessment of how our students are doing; 3. The Finland Model; 4. The Philly "School of the Future" model.

The Numbers DO Matter for Your Children
College admissions are more competitive than ever. Nationally normed tests such as the PSAT, SAT, and ACT have long histories of reliability, are psychometrically well-constructed, and provide meaningful comparisons. However, the No Child Left Behind Act spawned a cottage industry among states to come up with their own local tests, the majority of which have been poorly constructed and psychometrically invalid. Recently, St. Mary's School (OR) has discovered a way to not only capture meaningful information from its students, but to assess how they compare with students from other developed nations.

The Right-Brained Future: Creating 21st Century Schools
NAIS President Pat Bassett asks and answers three critical “school of the future” questions in this PowerPoint: Can we agree on what to teach in a 21st century “School of the Future”? Can we re-think how to assess for 21st century skills and values? How do we teach the “right-brained” skills and values for the 21st century? He uses independent school illustrations of teachers addressing the core skills and values of 21st schools, especially the “right-brained” aptitudes identified by Dan Pink in A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

The Three Essential Questions for Creating 21st Century Schools
This presentation by the president of NAIS is the one-hour "Cliff Notes" keynote version of the longer workshop versions of the School of the Future/Right-Brained Future presentations.

Trends: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The president of NAIS presents five trends that will impact strategy-making for independent schools in the years ahead, pointing out the "good, bad, and ugly" dimensions.

Books

High Noon
In High Noon, J. F. Rischard Challenges us to solve the problems of the 21st century with a new approach to global problem-solving. Defining and then offering a brief overview of the 20 most important and urgent global problems, Rischard finds that they all have two things in common: They're getting worse, not better, and the standard strategies for dealing with them, such as international treaties and on-and-off gatherings of governments, are woefully inadequate to the task.

Owned By the Land, Global Education and the Environment
The importance of our interconnected world has long been recognized at Deerfield Academy, which hosted the Global Connections IV conference on Environmentalism in 2000. This collection includes essays on China, India, Botswana, and Australia -- among other countries -- by authors such as Gilbert Grosvenor of National Geographic.

E-Newsletters

NAIS E-Bulletin February 2005
In this Issue: Jared Diamond to Speak at San Diego Conference; New Search Tool Revamps NAIS Website; NAIS Community Responds to Tsunami; Global Education Listserve; Career Center Can Help with the Perfect Match; Need Help in Assessing a Head's Performance?; Have You Canned Your Spam?;The Latest on ADD: Delivered from Distraction; Enrollment Trends at NAIS Schools

NAIS E-Bulletin January 2006
In this Issue:
• Bassett Blog: Giving:
• Hurricane Katrina — What Now?:
• Sign up for the NAIS-Friendly World Scholar-Athlete Games:
• Not Too Late to Sign up for Boston Annual Conference:
• Blogging and Internet Safety: Heard on the Listserves:
• Assessment of Inclusivity and Multiculturalism (AIM):
• 2006 NAIS Summer Institutes:
• Financial Aid: Making Your Job Easier with Comp*Assist:
• 2005–2006 StatsOnline Results Available:
• NAIS Website Under Construction on February 16 and 17

NAIS E-Bulletin July 2005
In this Issue:

• Are Your Students Up for the Challenge 20/20?
• About That Paycheck... : IRS Regs on Compensation
• Peter Pelham: A Man for all Seasons
• Compare Your Teachers' Salaries
• James Earl Jones: The Voice of PoCC
• Our Government Relations Team Working for You
• SSS Online Now Open
• Fall Financial Aid Workshops Beckon
• Heard on the Listserves: Tuition Financing Options
• Statistics on Students of Color 2004–2005
• StatsOnline... Salary, Tuition, and Enrollment (Part 1) Due Sept 22

NAIS E-Bulletin June 2005
This NAIS E-Bulletin includes the following articles

Hot off the Press: NAIS Tackles Faculty Recruitment and Parent Relations; Public vs. Private: The Debate Continues;
The Bassett Blog: The Balanced Scorecard
School's Out/Summer School's In for Leaders;
Global Solutions for Global Problems;
Financial Aid Awarded to 108,000 Independent School Students;
Participate in a Library Media Center Survey;
Heard on the Listserves: Advanced Placement Programs; and
StatsOnline Early Bird Deadline...June 23

NAIS E-Bulletin May 2005
Articles in the May 2005 E-Bulletin include Opening the Doors to the Global Schoolhouse, Join the NAIS Sustainability Institute, StatsOnline...Data Entry Begins May 2, Comparing Tuitions, WIS launches Center for International Education, Should You Freeze Tuition?, How Long Should You Keep Those Records?, and No More Time Outs.

NAIS E-Bulletin November 2005
In this Issue:

• Bassett Blog: Dateline Cairo and Manila… St. Louis
• Honoring Rosa Parks by Teaching Tolerance
• Improving Community Relations in Five Steps
• NAIS Annual Conference Launches Two New Programs
• Calling All Future School Leaders
• Brace Yourself for the Teacher Recruitment Season
• Seeking Challenge 20/20 Stories
• Teacher Award for Underserved Communities
• Helping Parents with Financial Aid
• Sign up today for SSS Financial Aid Workshops
• Salary, Tuition, and Enrollment Available Now!
• Heard on the Listserves: Parent Giving

NAIS E-Bulletin, April 2006
In this Issue:
• Bassett Blog: How Does Your School Measure "Academic Success"?
• From Boston to Beijing and Bangalore: How "Futurewise" Are You?
• Take the Next Challenge 20/20!
• How Do You Respond to High Tuition Charges?
• Practical New Titles from NAIS
• StatsOnline 2006-2007 Key Dates Now Available
• Is Your School Prepared for Avian Flu?
• School's Out! Join an NAIS Summer Institute
• PoCC 2006: Nourishing Ourselves for the Swim Upstream
• New Mandarin Texts for Your Chinese Classes
• Is the Financial Aid Season Keeping You Busy?
• Heard on the Listserve: Educational Practices for the Future

NAIS E-Bulletin, July-August 2006
• Bassett Blog: The Small Classes Debate
• Call for NAIS Board Nominations 2007–2010
• Be a Virtual Participant in NAIS's India Delegation
• Understanding Students at Independent Schools
• NAIS Welcomes New Staffers McIntyre, Jones, and Miller
• Parlez-Vous Mandarin? Catch up with the NAIS China Connection
• Upping the Challenge 20/20
• Emergency Planning: Can You Operate a Virtual School?
• NAIS History: The John Esty Years: 1978-1991
• Support for Aspiring Heads
• Sign up for the SSS Financial Aid Workshops
• Newly Revised Family Guide to Financial Aid

NAIS E-Bulletin, March 2009
In This Issue:
OPINION
• Bassett Blog: Sailing into the Storm
• Cartoon Caption Contest: Last Month's Winner
• Cartoon Caption Contest: This Month's Cartoon
NAIS NEWS
• 2009 NAIS Annual Conference: Second Life
• Financial Sustainability, Philanthropy, and Leadership Showcased in Three New NAIS Titles
NAIS RESEARCH
• NAIS Online Research Tools
NAIS OFFERINGS
• Join Your Peers at the NAIS Summer Institutes!
• Global Problem-Solving Through the Challenge 20/20 Program
• Recruit a Mandarin Teacher Through the China Connection
• Earn a Certificate in Global Leadership Education
• Nominate a Teacher of the Future Today!
NAIS RESOURCES
• New URL for NAIS Communities
• Dynamic New School and Student Services for 2009–2010
• Learn from the Stories of Excellence: Case Studies of Exemplary Teaching and Learning with Technology
•
• Join the New Blog: Managing Technology During an Economic Downturn
• School Policies? What Policies?
• Heard on the Listserve: Board Advice and Consent

NAIS E-Bulletin, November 2006
In this Issue:
• Bassett Blog: High Season for Head Searches
• Serving Trustees: The Cup Runneth Over
• Take Advantage of the SSS Financial Aid Workshops
• Hawaiian Earthquake Recovery Underway
• Calling All Aspiring Heads
• Last Call for PoCC Registration
• Are You Interested in Offering Chinese Classes?
• Deadline Extended for Current Challenge 20/20 Participants to Submit Program Reports
• Annual Conference Registration Opens on November 1
• New Admission Brochure for Parents
• Crisis Management Case Study
• StatsOnline: Salary, Tuition, and Enrollment Data Now Available!
• MySpace vs. Your Fears

NAIS Heads Up(date) July/August 2004

• Call for Nominations to the NAIS Board
• The Bassett Blog: "Equity and Justice"
• Case Study #29: The Anonymous Letter from the Disgruntled Constituent
• Global Partnership: New Benefits for NAIS Member Schools
• BoardSouce Membership: Extended Benefit for NAIS Member Schools
• Not to Miss: Leadership through Partnership (LTP)

Events Documents

2006 Institute for Student Leaders
Information about the Institute for Student Leaders, to be held in conjunction with the Annual Conference in Boston on March 1, 2006.

2007 Global Education Summit
All leaders of independent education around the world who are committed to developing global citizens are invited to attend the second NAIS Global Education Summit. Exchange with your colleagues about steps schools can take to be more globally sustainable in curriculum and operations. The Summit will lead off with challenging keynote addresses by Mary Robinson and Hafsat Abiola.

2007 Institute for Student Leaders
The 2007 Institute for Student Leaders taking place at the Marymount School, London campus, is a second-year forum for developing students' global leadership and citizenship skills and it is designed for student leaders from around the world.

2008 Institute for Student Leaders
Details about the 2008 Institute for Student Leaders taking place in Costa Rica summer 2008.

2008 NAIS Annual Conference Speaker Karen Kasmauski
This is a first-person account of the speech Karen Kasmauski gave about her experiences on the front lines of global health.

2008 NAIS Annual Conference Speaker Kenneth Bacon
This is a first-person account of the speech Kenneth Bacon gave at the third Global Education Summit held in conjunction with the NAIS Annual Conference.

2009 Institute for Student Leaders (ISL)
Information about the 2009 Institute for Student Leaders (ISL) including registration information and important dates.

2009 NAIS Annual Conference Global Education Summit
This is an article about the Global Education Summit panel discussion led by Merry Merryfield at the 2009 NAIS Annual Conference in Chicago.

2009 NAIS Annual Conference Speaker Jehane Noujaim
This is an article about the presentation Jehane Noujaim made at the 2009 NAIS Annual Conference in Chicago.

B-11 Teaching the Multicultural Middle East: Israel, Palestine, and “Encounter Point”
At PoCC 2006, the six members of the Middle East Affinity group included Middle Easterners, North Africans, and Central Asians; Muslims, Jews, and Christians; Arabs, Persians, and Berbers. How did such a diverse collection of people find itself thrown together into a single group? This workshop will address Middle Eastern multiculturalism by looking at the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Attendees will learn about the theoretical and political challenges of teaching the Middle East and examine teaching tools and the documentary film Encounter Point, which follows both Israeli and Palestinian members of the grass-roots organization Bereaved Parents Circle. This interactive session will model activities for use in the classroom and provide practical resources for teachers.

B-12 Urban Development through Service-Learning: Mumbai to New Orleans
We will offer a model for student exploration of urban communities through service-learning. Using a Mumbai trip as a case study, we will use an interactive approach to break down social, ethnic, and cultural issues prevalent in urban environments. Participants will first learn the Mumbai model and will then apply it to New Orleans. Outcomes for participants will include exposure to a model for urban exploration that includes interaction with government, nonprofit, and commercial sectors, suggestions for melding of service and academics, and meaningful interaction with the social issues prevalent in New Orleans.

C-15 Creativity and Conflict: Methods for Exploring the Ethnic Identity of “The Other”
An important part of global education is exploring identity and perspectives among people living in conflict abroad, revealing the relative nature of truth and teaching students to humanize and honor the “other.” Exploring creative expression, particularly photography and poetry, fosters the ability to cross the boundaries of religion, politics, and upbringing. We will use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to explore methodologies for teaching politically difficult material in an open, compassionate environment that humanizes conflict and encourages pluralistic questioning.

Flash Movie (FLV)

Challenge 20/20 Video

China Connection Video

General Content

101 Ways to Go Global and Green
Tips on how to create schools that are globally and environmentally sustainable.

2005 Challenge 20/20 Award Recipients for Grades 5-9
Polytechnic School, Pasadena, CA, and Strathcona Tweedsmuir School, Alberta, Calgary, Canada Global Problem: MASSIVE STEP-UP IN THE FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY

2005 Challenge 20/20 Award Recipients for Grades 9-12
Mount Saint Joseph Academy, Flourtown, PA and St. Joseph's Convent Girls' Senior Secondary School, Jabalpur, India Global Problem: GLOBAL INFECTIOUS DISEASES

2005 Challenge 20/20 Award Recipients for Grades PK-5

2005-06 Challenge 20/20 Participating Teams' Websites
On this page, visitors can find a comprehensive collection of websites created by partnered teams for the 2005–2006 Challenge 20/20 program. On these various websites, schools present the global problems the have teams worked on, the local solutions identified by students, testimonials, blogs, and photographs of participating teams.

This is not a complete list of 2005–2006 participating schools, as we are highlighting only those schools that have created websites. The listings are organized by grade levels: elementary schools, middle schools and upper schools.

2005-06 Challenge 20/20 Program
Information about the 2005-06 Challenge 20/20 Program and award recipients.

2006-07 Challenge 20/20 Award Recipients and Finalists
This page contains a listing of schools that were finalists and award recipients for the 2006-07 Challenge 20/20 program.

2008 Global Education Summit (GES)
The Third NAIS Global Education Summit welcomes leaders of independent education from around the world for further conversations on global issues and the development of global citizens. This year’s keynote speakers are Kenneth Bacon, the president of Refugees International, and Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy at Princeton University.

2009 Global Education Summit (GES)
Details about the Global Education Summit (GES) - 2009 - Chicago, IL

A Global Paradigm Shift in Science Fairs
A Global Paradigm Shift in Science Fairs

Annual Conference
The NAIS Annual Conference is the largest annual gathering of independent school leaders, administrators, and teachers. It is the meeting place for thousands of professionals to network, share ideas, develop skills and knowledge, and celebrate independent education.

Apply for NAIS Programs
View and apply for different NAIS programs, such as Challenge 20/20, Leading Edge, and the Aspiring School Heads program.

Articles about Challenge 20/20
This is a collection of articles about Challenge 20/20 participating schools and their projects.

Articles on Global Education and Sustainability
This section will highlight relevant articles on global education and environmental sustainability.

Challenge 20/20 - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
A collection of questions and answers about the Challenge 20/20 program.

Challenge 20/20 General Program Description in Multiple Languages
Challenge 20/20 general program description in Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish, and Romanian.

Challenge 20/20 Guidelines
This page will provide guidelines and tips for Challenge 20/20 participants.

Challenge 20/20 Online Application
This page contains the Challenge 20/20 application and other necessary forms.

Challenge 20/20 Online Reports
This page contains information about how schools can submit their online reports for Challenge 20/20.

Challenge 20/20 Past Projects
This page is a clearinghouse of projects submitted by past Challenge 20/20 participants.

Challenge 20/20 Program Details
Details about the Challenge 20/20 program.

Challenge 20/20 Program Details
This page describes the Challenge 20/20 program in detail and offers guidelines for participation.

Challenge 20/20 Terms of Agreement
Terms of Agreement for participating in the Challenge 20/20 program.

Charlotte Country Day School
The NAIS Global Initiative provides Independent Schools with a variety of resources to help develop new school programs or enhance existing programs that address educational matters of an international nature.

Chinese American International School - Global Education Resources
The NAIS Global Initiative provides Independent Schools with a variety of resources to help develop new school programs or enhance existing programs which address educational matters of an international nature.

Culver Academies Global Education Programs
An introduction to Culver Academies' global education programs.

Delegation for Diversity 2008: China and Taiwan
NAIS is committed to promoting diversity and global citizenship for its members. To strengthen this commitment, we launched a global initiative in 2002 titled the Delegation for Diversity. Delegates -- who include independent school administrators, heads, diversity practitioners, and teachers -- learn, advocate, and exchange best practices in creating and sustaining inclusive school communities with colleagues in countries around the world. Read about Delegation for Diversity 2008 to China and Taiwan in this diary from a participant.

Environmentally Sustainable Schools: Green Resources
This page contains links to green resources that will help schools become more environmentally sustainable.

Global Education
NAIS is developing a repository of global education resources throughout the independent school community.

Global Education Presentations
This is a list of presentations about global education.

Global Education Professional Development for Educators
This page contains information about global education professional development opportunities offered by NAIS.

Global Education Programs
This is a listing of global education programs offered by NAIS.

Global Education Summit Homepage
Leaders of independent schools around the world are invited to attend to share in the discussion at the NAIS Global Education Summit.

Global Sustainability
Within the Trustee Site, in the fifth section covering Key Issues Facing Independent Schools, this is the article detailing the importance of global sustainability.

Harpeth Hall - Global Education Resources
The NAIS Global Initiative provides Independent Schools with a variety of resources to help develop new school programs or enhance existing programs which address educational matters of an international nature.

Head-Royce School's Global Education Programs
Head-Royce School's Global Education Programs

International College, Beirut - Global Education Resources
The NAIS Global Initiative provides Independent Schools with a variety of resources to help develop new school programs or enhance existing programs which address educational matters of an international nature.

Key Issues Facing Independent Schools
This is the landing page for the Key Issues Facing Independent Schools section of the Governance/Trustee site on the NAIS website.

Lakeside School - Global Education Resources
The NAIS Global Initiative provides independent schools with a variety of resources to help develop new school programs or enhance existing programs that address educational matters of an international nature.

Leading Edge Program 2006 Honorees
This article provides a brief profile of each program honored in the 2006 Leading Edge Program.

Models at Independent Schools: Programs Listed by Type
This page includes a collection of globally oriented programs at schools. Programs are listed by type.

NAIS Benefits for Small Schools
Small schools are the heart of independent school education. They model innovation in curriculum, power of mission, and efficient financial models. Especially in this time of tightening financial markets, we want to make sure small school members are fully benefiting from their NAIS membership. Except where noted, these resources are FREE for NAIS members.

NAIS Global Education Resources
This is a collection of resources related to global education. It includes Principles of Good Practice (PGPs) for Global Education, PowerPoint Presentations, ideas for incorporating environmental and global sustainability into schools' curriculum as well as articles and books related to global education.

NAIS Resources for Academic Leaders
Suggested resources for academic leaders to help them in all aspects of their job.

NAIS Resources for Global Education
This is a collection of resources related to global education. It includes Principles of Good Practice (PGPs) for Global Education, PowerPoint Presentations, ideas for incorporating environmental and global sustainability into schools' curricula, as well as articles and books related to global education.

NAIS Teachers of the Future
Information about the NAIS Teachers of the Future program.

NESA Virtual Science Fair
NESA Virtual Science Fair began at the American International School in Israel as the brain child of middle school science teacher, Dr. Stuart Fleischer.

Online Resources
This page offers a clearinghouse of resources related to programmatic sustainability including Schools of the Future and 21st Century Schools. It includes a listing of Schools of the Future Resources: Educational Technology Resources and Communities, related NAIS Annual Conference offerings and articles about schools using innovative technologies; Programmatic Sustainability; and Tools You Can Use.

Organizations as Global Education Resources
This web page is a clearinghouse of non-profit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: China
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the area of China.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Critical Languages
This web page is a clearinghouse of non-profit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in various areas.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Global Challenges and Awards
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Global Education Scholarships
This web page is a clearinghouse of non-profit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the area of global education scholarships.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Environmental Sustainability
This web page is a clearinghouse of non-profit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the various areas.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Gap-Year Programs
This web page is a clearinghouse of non-profit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the area of global citizenship.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Global Curriculum
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the various areas.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: International Baccalaureate (IB)
This web page is a clearinghouse of non-profit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the various areas.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: International Organizations and Associations
This web page is a clearinghouse of non-profit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the page is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the various areas.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: International Sports
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: International Students
This web page is a clearinghouse of non-profit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the area of international students.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Online Collaboration, Wikis and Listserves
This web page is a clearinghouse of non-profit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the page is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the various areas.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Professional Development
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the various areas.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Research, School Projects, and Service Learning
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the various areas.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Student Exchange Programs — American Students
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the various areas.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Student Exchange Programs — International Students in the U.S.
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the various areas.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Student Exchange Support
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the various areas.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Study Abroad
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Study Trips
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the area of study trips.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Summer and Volunteer Programs
Organizations as Global Education Resources: Summer and Volunteer Programs

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Teacher Exchanges
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the page is to provide resources to schools to develop their own global education programs in the area of teacher exchanges.

Organizations as Global Education Resources: Web-based Programs
This web page is a clearinghouse of nonprofit organizations that offer global education resources, products, and services. The purpose of the site is to provide a listing of available Web-based programs.

Phillips Academy Andover - Global Education Resources
The NAIS Global Initiative provides independent schools with a variety of resources to help develop new school programs or enhance existing programs that address educational matters of an international nature.

Pine Point School
Summary of global education programs at Pine Point School in Stonington, CT.

Programmatic Sustainability
NAIS believes that schools need to work toward programmatic sustainability by being receptive to new models of educating children, continuing to incorporate research about learning styles, and designing educational opportunities reflective of the global environment in which we live.

Punahou School - Global Education Resources
The NAIS Global Initiative provides independent schools with a variety of resources to help develop new school programs or enhance existing programs that address educational matters of an international nature.

Ravenscroft School – Global Education Programs
Letter from the head of school (Ravenscroft School) about their global education programs.

Saint Mark's School - Global Education Resources
The NAIS Global Initiative provides Independent Schools with a variety of resources to help develop new school programs or enhance existing programs which address educational matters of an international nature.

Sanford School - Global Education Resources
The NAIS Global Initiative provides independent schools with a variety of resources to help develop new school programs or enhance existing programs that address educational matters of an international nature.

Sustainability: Creating 21st Century Sustainable Schools
Sustainability: In 2005, NAIS President Pat Bassett spelled out a vision for independent schools to become more sustainable along five continua: financial, environmental, global, programmatic, and demographic.

The China Connection 2006-07
The China Connection program is a new initiative that NAIS is developing in cooperation with HANBAN, a Chinese NGO funded by the Chinese government. Through this initiative, nine heads of schools from across the United States and one NAIS representative will visit China from June 15-25, 2006 to recruit Chinese teachers.

The Meadowbrook School of Weston
The NAIS Global Initiative provides independent schools with a variety of resources to help develop new school programs or enhance existing programs that address educational matters of an international nature.

Tools You Can Use
NAIS has developed many tools to aid you in your service as a trustee, particularly in the area of global sustainability. The following links take you directly to these tools and provide instructions on how to use them most effectively.

Trends
From demographic changes to new economic realities, peruse relevant trends affecting schools.

Washington International School - Global Education Resources
The NAIS Global Initiative provides Independent Schools with a variety of resources to help develop new school programs or enhance existing programs which address educational matters of an international nature.

Welcome to the Challenge 20/20 Homepage!
NAIS's Challenge 20/20 Program provides an opportunity for public and private schools to develop international partnerships and to work toward real solutions to global problems.

With Respect for All

Ideas@Work

Itinéraires de Découverte/EB Energy Project
The Itinéraires de Découverte (IDD) is a two-hours a week, mixed-grade elective at our middle school.

Kahua Kukui: Stewardship of the Land and Sea
Kahua Kukui is an intensive environmental stewardship class designed for students entering grades four through six. These students explore their island community, learn about nature, and work together on various service projects that foster care and knowledge of the land and sea. This program encourages students to think about how they can take an active part in making a difference (both short term and long term) in their community. It introduces them to the idea of social entrepreneurship, as students look at their community’s problems and resources and actively work on solutions. The program also gives high school students the opportunity to act as teachers and role models for the younger students participating in the class.

2005 Challenge 20/20 Award Recipients for Grades 5-9
Polytechnic School, Pasadena, CA, and Strathcona Tweedsmuir School, Alberta, Calgary, Canada Global Problem: MASSIVE STEP-UP IN THE FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY

2005 Challenge 20/20 Award Recipients for Grades 9-12
Mount Saint Joseph Academy, Flourtown, PA, and St. Joseph's Convent Girls' Senior Secondary School, Jabalpur, India Global Problem: GLOBAL INFECTIOUS DISEASES

2005 Challenge 20/20 Award Recipients for Grades PK-5
The Key School, Annapolis, MD, USA, and Somers Park Primary School, Malvern, Worchestershire, United Kingdom, and Chumbageni Primary School, Tanga, Tanzania Global Problem: EDUCATION FOR ALL

A Global Challenge: The Ultimate Solo Race
Every four years since 1982, an extraordinary global event has taken place - Velux 5 Oceans. During this amazing adventure, men and women compete in a sailing race around the world, covering more than 30,000 nautical miles in seven months. As the longest single-handed event in the world, it is one of the toughest sporting challenges ever, achieved by fewer people than have been in space. During the 2006-07 school year, students in Shorecrest’s fourth grade along with the rest of the lower division, will follow the eight sailors in “real-time” as the adventure unfolds before them. They will use the Internet and e-mail as learning tools, integrating geography, history, science, math, and writing. The unpredictability of this event provides endless learning opportunities as students experience the race day to day through the sailors’ eyes.

Active Curriculum
Accredited by the Association for Experiential Education, the Colorado Rocky Mountain School (CRMS) active curriculum emphasizes an appreciation of the outdoors, work ethic, community service, and physical labor. The active curriculum incorporates our extensive all-school outdoor trips and sports, and an integral part of this co-curricular active curriculum is our work program. At CRMS, we believe that work and service are essential parts of life and learning, an integral part of the overall CRMS experience. Historically, much of the campus was built by student work crews, who participate in a work crew two times a week. For example, our biodiesel, garden, ranch, recycling, and energy work crews are designed to increase awareness of our environment and sustainable living practices.

Affiliated Schools: Growing a Global Network
This article looks at the partnership between Washington International School, located in Washington, DC, and the KIS International School in Bangkok, Thailand.

Athenian Environmental Stewardship Program
This program unifies the many elements of environmental sustainability into a single powerful effort by focusing on the long-term health and well being of our community members, as our well being is dependent upon our environment.

Bertschi Center - Going Green!
Bertschi’s mission is to educate children to become compassionate, confident, and creative learners in a global community. The Bertschi Center will be the first LEED certified school building in Washington state.

Building a Sustainable Future
This document profiles New Canaan Country School (CT) and its work to become more environmentally sustainable.

Building Green Paths to the Future Every Day
Young children experience the environment in vastly different ways than adults do. That is why the Children’s School has spent the past 10 years planning and designing a new “green” school building and campus that appeals to young (ages three to eight) children's exquisite sensitivity to their environment.

Center for Entrepreneurial and Global Studies
The Center for Entrepreneurial and Global Studies focuses on teaching students to become global citizens.

Chicken Art
Chicken Art, as simple as it sounds, remains a project that has allowed our students to live our school’s mission and in that process to meet the needs of students and their teachers in a small village school in South Africa.

Chinese Initiative
The Chinese Initiative at Far Hills Country Day School is an innovative, integrated study of Chinese culture and language beginning in prekindergarten, when children's minds are ripe for language learning. To our knowledge, it is the first program of its kind that teaches Chinese to primarily non-Chinese students in the early childhood years. Our youngest children spend time becoming familiar with Chinese culture and they begin to hear and practice the four tones -- the building blocks of the Mandarin language -- and see Chinese characters in writing. In second grade, “formal” language instruction commences, as students use Chinese to practice the four tones, ask and answer questions, greet teachers and friends, learn colors, and identify family members. In the years to come, upper elementary and middle school students will add character recognition and writing to their communication repertoire.

Collaborating across Borders
Marymount School of New York is part of an international network of schools of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary (RSHM), with sister schools in Paris, London, Rome, Los Angeles, and other European and South American cities. They share a common mission and goals and collaborate on ways to infuse ethical thinking and responsible living into their curricula.

Community Service Odysseys
These trips are one to two weeks long and include host family stays, cultural immersion, and community service projects coordinated by the hosting organizations of Club de Leone’s International Santo Domingo, Pro-Peru and Compas de Nicaragua.

Connections Community Service and Study Abroad Program
Sonoma Academy’s community service and study abroad program, CONNECTIONS, requires all students to participate in weekly volunteer or community service projects, addressing local, state, national, and global issues. Last year, students volunteered with local organizations such as Redwood Empire Food Bank and Sonoma County Animal Shelter, and initiated numerous internationally-focused projects, including fund raising for micro-loan recipients in Kenya and survivors of the Iranian earthquake. The program organizes study/travel trips at intersession each January and during school breaks; in the school’s first three years, the program sponsored trips to China, Costa Rica, Mexico, France, and Thailand. A minimum of three travel/study trips are coordinated each year. Our scholarship program ensures that every student is eligible to participate, regardless of their family’s financial means.

Creating Safe Havens
In 2008-2009, we are creating "safe havens" through conducting bird house designing workshops for families. All the money raised will go to a school in Rwanda.

Crossroads Teen AIDS Ambassadors
The Crossroads Teen AIDS Ambassadors are educator-activists, grades 8-12, trained at the UCLA AIDS Institute, working towards the eradication of HIV/AIDS.

Cultural Connections@Rancho Santa Fe, HONDURAS
Eighth grade Glen Urquhart Spanish students travel to the Rancho Santa Fe orphanage in rural Honduras where they live and work in a self-sufficient community, interacting with the 600 resident children and volunteering on the farm and grounds, in the kitchen and tortilla house, in the medical clinic and preschool. They experience first-hand a community dedicated to helping neglected children become caring and productive citizens. The greater Glen Urquhart community supports the program by donating needed supplies. All K-8 students learn about Honduran life and culture in their Spanish classes, discussing issues of poverty and unequal distribution of resources, and learning the value of taking action and nurturing hope.

Cultural Exchange Program at The Meadowbrook School
Information on the Meadowbrook School's Cultural Exchange Program.

Dignity Center
The Dignity Center (TDC) is a curricular program, a place within The Orchard School, and a community lighthouse for global readiness. As a transformative program designed to prepare students for a complex, global society, TDC provides experiences to cultivate the skills and attitudes necessary for citizenship in today’s world. At the heart of this program is the belief that dignity lies within all people and differences among people provide us with opportunities for growth and understanding.

Dolphins Communications Project at Pine Point
Cross Cultural Links with Pine Point and Mikura Island School.

Earth Education and Living Classroom
We now view this program as the culture of our learning community and as the larger, overarching program that holistically connects the rich, varied activities that occur on campus. This program began with the construction of a Community Garden and with the head of school encouraging teachers to look beyond their classrooms and utilize the entire campus as a “living classroom.” Nine years after its inception, this program now comprises an official Montessori School of Maui Environmental Policy, a student-led Recycling Committee and Farmers’ Market Gardens. As an extension of this program, staff members and local experts also drafted a lengthy set of Guidelines of Sustainability and Curriculum to guide our current campus expansion.

Ecological Thinking in Building Design at The Willow School (NJ)
This is a profile of ecological approach The Willow School has used as it's created its campus.

Economics in a Global Curriculum
The International Academic Partnership (IAP) at Phillips Academy - Andover promotes global education and student-centered teaching at participating schools. The program focuses on professional development for teachers and curricular innovation at affiliated institutions.

Environmental Stewardship at Westtown School
Westtown School has a long history of environmental stewardship, which has in recent years become an increasingly cohesive and effective program of sustainability.

Exposure
The project is a collaborative project between Cincinnati Country Day School and the University of Cincinnati creating a model photography curriculum out of traditional norms.

Faith Traditions
This required freshman course, which meets during terms two and three, introduces students to the traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Framework for Global Education
The program is division-wide, curricular and co-curricular, integrating a researched and comprehensive framework that expands traditional approaches to teaching and learning. At its core this framework incorporates global education dimensions into all aspects of a student's experience.

Fun with International Projects
Students in Worcester Preparatory's Lower School (Maryland) enjoy working on projects that allow them to interact with children in other schools. In addition to their work with the Challenge 20/20 program, during which they teamed with a school in Hollywood, Worcester's students chat with friends at the St. Mary's School near the White Cliffs of Dover, work on a website that includes mostly European schools, and participate in BBC's WorldClass projects. In June 2009, as a result of comments students made online about world economic problems, a BBC reporter visited the school to work with a student reporter. The BBC reporter and the student reporter talked with students in grades three and five about economic problems facing families and their neighborhoods and how to solve the world financial crisis. The comments were for BBC Radio and the BBC WorldClass website.

George School's Global Service Program
The Global Service Program is designed to enhance the scope and quality of international service trips for secondary school students by providing training programs for adult leaders and by sponsoring transformative international experiences for students.

Global Understanding
Our school has made a commitment to increasing our diversity of person and thought. We have recently formed a relationship with the International Rescue Committee. Through them we have been introduced to children and their parents who are refugees from perilous places of the world, and who have settled here in Charlottesville, VA. Our ESL program supports their academic work; our school and some parents lend financial aid. These students complete the same academic program as our other students and we expect to place these students in colleges and universities. The presence of these students in our school is a catalyst for global awareness and personal growth among our school community.

Global Awareness Symposium Series
To better integrate multicultural awareness with a classical education, Episcopal Academy has developed its Global Awareness Symposium Series. The curriculum development initiative includes four components: identification of a symposium program topic, a classroom component, a chapel-based component, and a symposium for the external community. Teachers build hands-on exercises that focus on the topic’s importance. Chapel sermons and extracurricular activities demonstrate its application at a community level. A national symposium follows, designed to aid fellow educators in shaping their own curricula. To date, Episcopal’s Global Awareness Symposium has had two program topics: 1) Understanding Islam in a Post 9-11 World 2) Development of a Bioethics Consortium.

Global Citizenship and Social Change Curriculum
Wilbraham and Monson Academy is offering a series of regional studies courses entitled "Global Citizenship and Social Change" (GCSC curriculum). The courses are each one-trimester long, and focus on Africa, Latin America, and Asia, with one region per trimester.

Global Community Class
Global Community class at The Blake School immerses 11th and 12th grade students in a semester-long simulation of the United Nations. It is an experiential course in which the students are placed “in the shoes” of international diplomats, representing various countries from around the world as ambassadors to the United Nations. This course examines how social, political, economic, and cultural factors are intertwined to eventually render foreign policy decisions. A major focus is placed upon what action plans can reasonably be accomplished to ameliorate international problems. This is a student-centered course in which, after researching various topics from a particular country’s perspective, students are encouraged to discuss, debate, negotiate, and compromise with each other.

Global Community Realized in Our K-12 Curriculum
Scholarship, Diversity, Citizenship. We are constantly examining the way to best meet our mission through the curriculum we choose to teach, through our classroom pedagogy, and through our commitment to a diverse faculty and student body.

Global Education and Sustainability at Lakeside
Lakeside School views environmental and long-term sustainability as central to the Global Service Learning program.

Global Education Curriculum at Head-Royce School
Information about the Head-Royce School Curriculum

Global Education Program
The Global Education Program at Head-Royce seeks to instill in our community a deeper understanding of and appreciation for cultures and people around the globe. The program prepares students to address the complex issues these people face in a rapidly changing and increasingly interconnected world.

Global Immersion Program
Global Immersion Program (GIP) integrates our curriculum with experiential learning and exposes all students to global issues. The school read Reading Lolita in Tehran. We had the author, Azar Nafisi, to speak about human rights, political freedom, and imagination. A study/class trip to South Africa exposed students to the themes — poverty, AIDS, women and leadership, and sustainability. We worked with several township schools and met with Archbishop Tutu. Paul Rusesabagina of Hotel Rwanda will speak this term. A curriculum was designed to explore the history of the crisis and debate strategies that could be pursued to prevent the genocide. Students analyze what will be effective in the future as the international community confronts similar conditions. School visits to the UN, World Bank, and IMF are part of GIP.

Global Outreach and Action Leadership (GOAL)
The Nobles GOAL program was designed to create a specific service component of our broader international programs by developing partnerships in South Africa, Senegal, and Romania. Nobles has been sending students on international exchange and service trips for more than 20 years. We send about 50 percent of our students on a Nobles sponsored international and/or service trip during their high school careers. These trips are part of our broader institutional commitment to service and global citizenship.

Global Outreach: An Independent Study in Web Design
Saint Stephen’s Episcopal School (SSES), Research Technology Associates, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania partnered with Global Outreach (GO), a nondenominational public charity, which was established in 1998 as a social ministry effort to improve the quality of life for residents of Tanzania. GO’s vision introduces computer literacy into the curriculum of secondary schools in impoverished central Tanzania. SSES upper school students designed a website and computer literacy project for Pommern Secondary School in Iringa province, a rural boarding school with no running water or electricity. SSES students researched and indexed educational CDs for the computer lab, which first ran on generator power. Now solar powered, the computer lab serves 1,000 Pommern students.

Global Perspectives
Global Perspectives is an eighth grade elective. It focuses on a variety of areas related to current global issues: politics, social issues, science, health, the environment, etc. Members of the class learn about the selected issues and their impact on different peoples of the world.

Global Service Learning (GSL)
Lakeside School's Mission Focus statement calls on the school to develop "citizens capable of and committed to interacting compassionately, ethically, and successfully with diverse peoples and cultures to create a more humane, sustainable global society."

Global Studies Program
Beauvoir’s school-wide global studies program is a cyclical five-year curriculum in which students annually engage in an inquiry-based, interactive, integrated study of countries from one of five geographical regions: Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and North America. Each grade level studies a different country, within the region of study, for nine weeks. Students pose questions around what they want to learn, immersing themselves in the customs and practices of their country. Learning occurs within and across grade levels through an experiential museum model, culminating in Museum Night where children, as docents, share their knowledge with others through displays they have created. Global Studies was implemented in 1997 under the leadership of the Social Studies Curriculum Committee.

Global Sustainability at Brimmer and May

Grace Exchange Program
The Grace Exchange Program is an expanding program of international home-stays, school visits, and touring exchanges, integrated into the Grace curriculum and bringing benefits to the entire Grace community and the communities with which Grace exchanges.

Hawk's Eye View
The Hawk’s Eye View of Katrina evolved in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As we returned to school in October of 2005, the impact she had on New Orleans was painfully evident. The development of the Hawk’s Eye View involved the collaboration of teachers across departments and divisions to explore the impact of the hurricane on our school, community, and nation.

Head-Royce School's Global Partnerships and Speakers
Head-Royce School's Global Partnerships

Head-Royce School's Professional Development Programs
Head-Royce School's Professional Development Programs

Head-Royce School's Travel, Study, and Service Programs
Head-Royce School's Travel, Study, and Service Programs

Hillbrook's Service Learning Program
Hillbrook's Service Learning Program exemplifies the strengthening of internal community and connectivity to the larger, global community, as well as our responsibility as citizens of both. Our program began in 2002 with a grassroots “Service Core” of 13 seventh and eighth graders who wanted to be involved in philanthropic activities coordinated by student government on campus. In just two years, 50 percent of seventh and eighth grade students were participating in the Service Core. We began by organizing older students for service projects on/off campus. We then created leadership opportunities for them; they in turn provide service education for younger students. Meaningful service learning is now integrated throughout all grades at Hillbrook, planting the seeds of lifelong service to others. The school-wide Service Learning program was a goal in our strategic plan and is also a part of our mission statement and philosophy.

Humanities in Action
The Humanities in Action program at Lake Ridge Academy is a full-day symposium offering an opportunity for students to present scholarly works such as papers and projects in the field of humanities to groups of peers, teachers, and university professors. Students in grades nine through 12 from other private and independent schools in the region participate by submitting papers or projects related to a globally significant theme selected each year. In the five years of the program, topics have ranged from the Mulatto Identity to Authentic Zionism. After students present their work, participants engage in lively discussion and debate the topic at hand. Students also have an opportunity to publish their research in a scholarly review produced for the Humanities in Action program.

Integrated World Studies (IWS) Program
The Integrated World Studies (IWS) Program is designed for all ninth graders at the Wellington School (OH) and connects history, writing, and literature in a three-period block where time is allotted according to need for group and individual activities.

International Day
International Day is an annual day-long event for our students, preschool through eighth grade, which focuses on a particular region of the world.

International Study Programs
Choate Rosemary Hall offers eight- to ten-week programs of study in Beijing, China; Paris, France; La Coruna, Spain; and Rome, Italy.

Joint Environmental Mission
The Joint Environmental Mission (JEM) program is an intercontinental program designed to create lasting international friendships and environmental stewardship. Founded in 1991 by collaborating Soviet and Buckingham Friends School teachers, JEM now consists of permanent partner schools in Russia, India, China, Australia, Ecuador, Haiti, Hawaii, Africa, and France.

K2K (Kids to Kids)
K2K is a partnership between La Jolla Country Day School and Project Concern International (PCI) promoting educational and cultural exchange, volunteerism, and philanthropy. PCI is an international nonprofit health and development agency that saves the lives of children by preventing disease and providing access to clean water and nutritious food. This partnership sought to link classes in the U.S. with PCI's school feeding project in rural Nicaragua that supports 20,000 students in 230 schools and the surrounding communities. We worked to develop a pilot project driven by the leadership of students and teachers to bring schools together to promote mutual learning and assistance. In October 2004, 13 sophomores and two teachers traveled to Jinotega, Nicaragua, for a service trip that changed all of our lives.

Lakeside's Mission Focus and Global Education
In 2003, Lakeside faculty, with representatives from trustees, parents, students, administrators, and staff, undertook to re-examine the school's mission statement and to identify core elements to be emphasized and brought to the very fore of what the school aims to accomplish. While the mission statement, adopted in 1994, remains unchanged, the Mission Focus that emerged as a result of this exercise emphasizes an even more precise set of intentions for the coming years.

Leadership and Character Development
The curriculum identifies important processes, skills, and opportunities that promote leadership. It suggests ways that the content and activities being offered at Highland can support the development and practice of global leadership skills for students. While certain topics and skills will be highlighted for discussion and development in the curriculum, the intent is to provide a framework that allows faculty to integrate leadership development into existing programs.

Leadership One and Leadership Two
Leadership One and Two are sequential courses that are offered to all 300 seventh and eighth graders. The curriculum is unique in that it has an experiential foundation and focuses on teaching the skills of intercultural understanding and global awareness.

Learn with Passion, Act with Courage, Experience the World
"Learn with Passion, Act with Courage, Experience the World" is The Advent School's motto, and it encompasses our approach to education. It is not one specific program; it is an approach that has transformed our school and students in just two short months. In conjunction with the United Nations' declaration of the "UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development," we have made substantial changes to our curriculum to reflect a focus on sustainability of the environment and its resources. Across all grades, our students are learning to respect and protect their environment as well as understand the issues affecting the other areas of the world's ability to do the same.

Making Change: Effort, Responsibility, Power
This is a year-long project that connects curriculum with real life issues. At Convent of the Sacred Heart, eighth graders study women in church history that have made a difference. To get a better understanding of what that is all about, students identify an issue in the world that they feel needs change, they research it, create and submit a proposal, and they go out and make the world a better place. Students learn about the effort it takes to be committed to improving the world, about global responsibility, about their own power, and public speaking skills.

Maputoland - Partnering for Better Lives in South Africa
Four years ago, the director of special programs at Saint Mark's School learned of and visited a small rural school near the northern border of South Africa. Touched by the graciousness, dignity, and hardship encountered during her visit, she set out to help this rural community in whatever way possible. This is the story of how one K-8 school in California committed to helping its peers in a faraway place called Maputoland.

Middle Eastern Studies/Model Arab League Program
This one-term course is an examination of the politics, economics, religions, and cultures of the modern Middle East.

Midland School Academic Program
Midland's academic program integrates college preparation with environmental stewardship, energy conservation, and leadership development. Courses incorporate experiential learning through the use of our 3,000-acre natural habitat and require projects that provide environmental research opportunities, including studies of native and non-native species, the use of alternative energy, and private vs. public resource ownership. Purposefully small and rustic, Midland is both a school and working ranch that teaches the value of study and work and a respect for nature.

Midland's Senior Thesis Project
Reflecting its commitment to environmental stewardship, sustainability, college preparation, and self-reliance, in 2003 Midland began to require a senior thesis, in which each senior produces a college-level research paper of significant scholarly merit that demonstrates her commitment to scholarship and environmental sustainability. In the spring of the junior year, students select a topic and open a scholarly dialogue with a faculty advisor. In the senior year, they begin to research their topics in-depth, culminating in the development of an essential question and, if applicable, a culminating project. They earn a full credit by conducting research, writing and revising, communicating with regional and/or national experts, and presenting their work to the school. The school recognizes theses of highest merit with a scholarship that pays for the authors' freshman year college books.

Mika Project
In June 2006, two faculty members, the head of school, and six rising seniors travelled to Mika, Tanzania, for two weeks of service.

Missions Program
The missions program provides spiritual and leadership development through service opportunities in the United States and around the world.

National Honor Society Lecture Series
The Cary Academy National Honor Society Lecture Series is an annual series of programs for the school and local community. National Honor Society members identify important national and international themes and bring in local and national experts to explore these in presentation or panel format. Past lecture series have included three to five events each year and have focused on topics such as the role of the United States in Iraq, the influence of the media in our culture, and the issues and choices of the 2004 election. In the current year, the series is examining morals and ethics in our personal lives and in global affairs. Lecture series events for the entire school are followed by small group discussions in advisory where the complexities of these issues are further explored.

Nexus
Nexus is an innovative academic program that connects our students with unique parts of the world. Each program augments academics through experiential education, exposure to global diversity, community improvement projects, and adventure in underdeveloped nations.

Oregon Episcopal's International Middle School Collaboration Program
Oregon Episcopal School Middle School, in conjunction with two schools in Australia and one in California, has developed an International Middle School Collaboration Program for students and teachers. The ICP is designed to nurture a responsible, compassionate global citizenry and offer students and teachers opportunities to practice the skills of vision, communication, and flexibility. Through participation in the year-long curriculum and a two-week summer program, students develop a sense of local, national and global responsibility and connectedness. Using a secure SharePoint student discussion board and website, students and teachers experience discovery and collaboration via technology as students engage in casual and formal conversations related to common lessons, both scientific and cultural. Students also participate in service projects associated with their own local wetlands.

Outdoor Program
The Chestnut Hill Academy Outdoor Program is a longstanding element of our curriculum that allows us to use the extraordinary natural areas that neighbor the school. The program introduces the boys to varied ecosystems that make up the Southeastern Pennsylvania tri-state area. The outdoor program builds sequentially as the boys learn groups of skills taking care of the environment. Each grade hikes monthly, focusing on one aspect of outdoor education. It begins with introductory hikes in second grade that focus on science thematic studies, such as owls or visual art lessons, focusing on artists such as Andy Goldsworthy. While each grade’s hikes/overnights dovetail with the social studies and science curricula, the foundation of the program is that children must learn to be part of their natural surroundings.

Palmer Trinity School's Tsunami Relief Efforts
This case study illustrates the methods used by Palmer Trinity School to contribute to both short-term as well as long-term tsunami relief efforts. Here you will find information about the school's contributions, contact information, and links to newsletters, articles, and journal entries.

Peace Education Curriculum
The Montessori School of Denver Peace Curriculum focuses on four areas that are designed to empower our students to be good citizens of the world and resolve their own conflicts. The four foci are self-awareness, community awareness, cultural awareness, and environmental awareness.

Perspectives: A Course in Diversity and Multiculturalism
Perspectives Five is a course for all fifth graders at our school. It was designed to facilitate the transition between our lower and middle schools, as well as introduce students to concepts of diversity, tolerance, and world geography. Students come to class every other day and they discuss topics like classroom issues of respect and kindness, bullying and social behavior, planning for success, good decision making, culture, tolerance, and “cultural geography.” The year ends with a look to future issues and a review of what has happened all year.

Professional Development for Global Service Learning at Lakeside
Faculty professional development linked with the Global Service Learning (GSL) program aims to equip Lakeside classroom teachers, program trip leaders, and community educators with a systems thinking approach to complex global issues, enabling them to stress with students new ways of thinking about both the problems we face and the opportunities we have to effect positive change.

Putting Principles into Practice for 21st Century Learning
Guided by its longstanding mission, Wilmington Friends School (WFS) (Delaware) implemented programs to prepare students for the 21st century world they will serve.

RESPECT
Baylor’s RESPECT (Regard Every Soul Purely Embracing Compassionate Thoughts) volunteer service program broadens and deepens students’ perspectives locally, regionally, and globally. Following lessons about poverty, oppression, racism, classism, and sexism, as well as on the cycle of poverty, students begin their part in breaking that cycle through education. For more than a decade, Baylor students have visited the same eight inner city sites daily to tutor and mentor more than 400 children. Students who identify talents or topics not being addressed design, seek funding for, and implement programs such as classes in foreign languages, computers, music, art, and AIDS education. Additionally, students volunteer to travel during school breaks to North Carolina and to Jamaica on service trips.

Seacrest Upper School Campus
Seacrest Country Day School's new upper school campus has been designed from the inside out. The innovative architectural design reflects the educational philosophy of the school while also addressing the environmental demands resulting from on-site wetlands in this fragile south Florida location. The new upper school building is a registered LEEDS project and will strive to be among the first schools across the country to achieve certification.

South Pond Project
Students at Francis W. Parker School in Chicago use the city as classroom as part of their experiential educational experience. In connecting their classroom work with the needs of society, the South Pond Project provides focus for close collaboration among students, scientists, and educators dedicated to the restoration of a natural ecosystem that was once common to this area.

St. John's Episcopal School - Global Education Resources
Information about global programs at St. John's Episcopal School

Stoneleigh-Burnham's Social Action Day
Social Action Day is an annual event at Stoneleigh-Burnham School (Massachusetts) focused on helping students gain awareness of various social issues, and providing them with information and avenues to begin enacting change either in their own views and actions or as a part of a larger movement. Presentations in the past have ranged from racism awareness to an exploration of sexist imagery in hip-hop music to a discussion of life as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Strategic Plan for International Programs at Ravenscroft School
At Ravenscroft, the primary mission of our International Programs is to serve as the central coordinating body and as a leader for the international education, programs, and activities of Ravenscroft School and to increase the school’s global profile. We seek to enhance, enrich, and broaden our students’ understanding of the world, while also fostering a greater appreciation of the diversity and rich cultural heritage beyond our nation’s boundaries. All of our international programs are intended to complement the classroom experiences that are at the center of a Ravenscroft education.

Sustainability Initiative
The Sustainability Initiative integrates curriculum and wilderness experience into a school culture of decision and action. The overarching goal of the Sustainability Initiative at Explorer West is to engage students in both academic and practical (or experiential) aspects of sustainability.

Sustainable San Domenico
The Sustainable San Domenico Program was developed to help direct and support the San Domenico community in more fully living out the challenge of its mission. Its goals are to integrate sustainability into the curriculum and to make the school operations -– food systems, maintenance, building programs, and buying practices -– all reflect the principles of sustainability.

Teaching Global Understanding: The Costa Rica Study Tour
Communications technology and interdependent world economies have redefined traditional notions of international boundaries, creating new ways to teach global understanding. In 2003 two faculty members studied rainforests in Costa Rica, spurring conversation about how their experience might help design a capstone opportunity for our oldest students. The resulting program “Costa Rica Study Tour” (CRST) fosters global awareness through study and service opportunities. During this nine-day trip, sixth grade students study with and engage in service projects with children living in Costa Rica. CRST addresses three of the highest priorities within our school: affirming cultural similarities and differences; experiential learning; and exercising our Quaker tradition of respecting and helping others.

Team Tobatí
Team Tobatí is a Kingswood-Oxford (Connecticut) student organization seeking to raise the standard of living of the impoverished majority of Tobatí, Paraguay. With the active support of local Tobatí community leaders and Connecticut area hospitals and universities, the team actively supports the improvement of education and healthcare services within this poor rural community. Along with working to strengthen the public clinic, the Reinaldo Macchi School, and the local Tobatí schools, Team Tobatí seeks to educate Kingswood-Oxford students by allowing young volunteers to see first hand the low wages, underemployment, malnutrition, lack of formal medical attention, and the insufficient educational structures that exist throughout the developing world. The students also witness the great improvements that can be made by working together and selflessly concentrating efforts and resources to build classrooms, medical outposts, and other service projects.

Telecommunications Initiatives
At Punahou School, telecommunications provides unprecedented opportunities and potential to address many issues and make global education meaningful and exciting.

Tenth Grade Exchange Program
Cary Academy (CA) has developed an innovative international exchange program for all students in grade 10. Designed to accelerate the development of the second language skills of students by providing natural and immediately relevant context for their use of the target language, it also fosters the personal growth of students by broadening their perspective and world vision. CA students spend two and a half to three weeks abroad living with host families and in return, host the students from those families in Cary. We feel that the reciprocal exchange format challenges our students to move beyond passive observation of the target culture as experienced through tourism to active participation in the target culture. By living with a host family, students see the world not only through their own cultural lens, but through the cultural lens of the country they are visiting. From 2004 on, NCR has provided two summer internships in Beijing for Cary Academy students who take Chinese. Interns are hosted by NCR employees and work in the NCR Beijing office for two weeks. Students do not get paid, but have room and board, plus transportation from the company. So far, 12 Cary Academy students have participated in this program. From 2007 on, Tekelec has provided one or two summer interns in France for Cary Academy students who take French. Three Cary Academy students have participated in this program.

The Calhoun School Green Roof Learning Center
This is a profile of ecological approach The Calhoun School has used as it's created its campus.

The Center for International Education at WIS
The Center for International Education (CIE) at Washington International School is an educational initiative to assist public and non-public schools to bring a greater international focus to their programs, resulting in more globally aware and responsive students.

The Lakeside Intercultural Program (LIP), Global Service Learning (GSL) and Partnerships
The Lakeside Intercultural Program (LIP) is a 20-year-old institution at Lakeside School aimed at exposing students to new and fascinating cultures, environments, and societies.

The St. John’s School's World Village Experience
This profile contains information about the St. John's World Village Experience.

Trevor / Concern USA United Nation Millennium Global Development Student Workshop
This workshop brought together more than 50 middle school students to discuss and debate the issues affecting the poorest countries in the world today, such as poverty, education, and women’s rights. Throughout the course of the day, students were presented with facts and information from specialists in the international field; they worked in small groups to design a strategy for a given country and the problem that it faces; they were provided with country information packets, statistics, and other resources to serve as references throughout the activity, as well as access to international field specialists; and they were given an opportunity to present their country’s plans to the large group at the end of the day.

Ursuline/Huaxia Exchange
In 1997, Ursuline Academy of Dallas and Huaxia Academy of Beijing signed an agreement to be sister schools.

Visiting Teachers through the Amity Institute
At Sanford School, we believe that students need to be aware of the broader world around them. They should become familiar with diverse lands, peoples, languages and cultures. Among the ways Sanford pursues this is through a close relationship with the Amity Institute teacher exchange program. Amity Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building international friendship and cultural understanding through teaching exchange. The exchange program arranges for certified professional teachers to serve as temporary paid faculty at primary and secondary levels.

Westminster-Mount Kenya Academy Exchange Program
This exchange program involves upper school students and teachers from Westminster traveling to Mount Kenya Academy in Nyeri, Kenya, for two weeks, followed by teachers and students from Mount Kenya Academy coming to Westminster for two weeks.

Winterim International Experiential Education
The Winterim program supports the Harpeth Hall Vision Statement through inventive, challenging, and spirited interaction among students and teachers. It is an experience that allows a student to develop, along unique avenues, her wonder in learning, independence of thought, honor in action, and joy in community. Academic Travel, one option for the Winterim period, allows students to immerse themselves in different environments and cultures and to connect real experience with what they have learned in the classroom.

World Cultures and Geography
World Cultures and Geography is a daily 100-minute class that helps The Norman Howard School's struggling ninth grade students to develop a framework for history -– understanding the world from a geographic view, building representations, and understanding the implications on culture across the world –- before they enter their tenth-grade history class. Students participating in this class have significant language and/or memory issues, and their basic reading and writing skills are not well developed. Therefore, the curriculum not only focuses on concepts related to geography and world cultures; in addition, specific language-based learning strategies are infused throughout the curriculum in a consistent, explicit manner.

Youth Conference on Political Activism
The Youth Conference on Political Activism, now in its sixth year, sponsors keynote speakers, workshops, and panels that address such broad subjects as Racism in Schools, Health in Mali, the School of the Americas, the War on Terrorism, the Palestinian and Isreali Dilemma, Alternative Sources of Energy, Global Warming, and Haiti’s Agrarian Reform.

Independent School Magazine Articles

2001: The World Our Students Will Enter
Just a reminder: we have gone close to a decade in this country without real income going up. It could be that we are poised to see real income decline, and, with it; the standard of living that has been our continuing pride. Obviously, if we are to increase our real wages and our standard of living, then we must effect increases in productivity by a labor force that is far superior to that of the rest of the world — the only labor force that can think for itself.

21st-Century Leading and Learning
Historian David McCullough reminds us that history did not need to happen the way it did. The future is never predetermined. Indeed, we know that the lives we live today have been shaped by many events, good and bad, but that much of the good we’ve known we owe to great leaders who have led us in times of peril and adversity. Churchill and Roosevelt saved the world from darkness when they turned the tide of World War II. Gandhi liberated India. Nelson Mandela ended South African apartheid. The optimism that America, and much of the world, presently feels rests on the leadership of one man who has encouraged us to believe in the “audacity of hope.”

52 Ways to Make Your Campus Budget More Sustainable
The United States appears to be at a tipping point regarding sustainable practices. Many schools have taken some action and would like to do more to implement sustainable environmental practices and programs on campus. But because of new concepts and changing technology, school administrators and faculty often do not have a plan for accomplishing this. What follows is a short summary of current best environmental stewardship practices promoted by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and the Council for Spiritual and Ethical Education (CSEE).

A Crack in the Sorting Machine
Most nations now administer standardized tests — for adult job seekers and young students alike — but the Chinese remain the world’s preeminent practitioners. But before panic descends in the U.S., a reality check is in order. It is undeniable that some element in the genetic and cultural inheritance of China, and probably of Asia in general, enables high performance on standardized tests. (In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell attributes a great deal of it to the farming of rice paddies.) But the correlation of Asia’s test scores to success in the world beyond testing is dubious at best. The test-taking ability so universal in China and East Asia did not develop overnight. Yet it has been the West, with its weaker quantitative skills as measured by tests, that has pioneered virtually every major technological innovation in recent centuries, including those that have created Friedman’s flat world. How could East Asia, with such formidable abilities, have remained so static for so long? Is there any doubt that Asians would have been dominant on international standardized tests, had they existed, in the 1700s and 1800s, when Westerners were creating the modern world? What accounts for the massive failure of correlation between the economic development of the West and the test-taking ability of the East?

An online student newspaper supported by global bureaus
The Student News Action Network takes the concept of the school newspaper beyond school walls and the confines of print media, allowing students to work collaboratively to create an interactive, multimedia-rich, student-driven online newspaper.

Become a Green School Alliance Charter Member
NAIS invites members to visit the Green School Alliance (GSA) website at: www.greenschoolsalliance.org. GSA can help your school become a global climate leader. Consider signing the GSA K–12 Climate Commitment and joining a growing list of independent schools from across the country that are making sustainable, energy-smart solutions a priority. NAIS is a GSA founding partner.

Before the World Changed
Since September 11, 2001, it has become a truism to say the world has changed. But when I looked through the stack of Independent School magazines published between 1991 and 2001, I was newly struck by how different things really are in this millennium — for schools as for everyone else. It's more than security concerns and an ongoing war that have changed us. Today, as an English teacher back in the classroom after nearly 30 years away, I see at every moment of my class that the process of teaching and learning — indeed, kids themselves — have been retooled by technology. Yet in the 23 issues of Independent School that I reviewed for this article, technology is discussed infrequently — and there is certainly no premonition that our world will be shaken by terrorism in the 21st century.

Bestselling Half the Sky highlights Overlake program
Nichlos Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn are the first married couple to win the Pulizer Prize in journalism for their coverage of China for The New York Times. Their latest collaboration, Holding up Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, features an entire chapter about a program at the Overlake School (Washington).

Beyond the Bizarre, the Superficial, the Exotic
To create student interest, teachers may focus on the strangest and most bizarre customs or the most “primitive” people of the region. This approach not only teaches students that other cultures are only of interest because they are “weird” or exotic, but it also does little to help students understand the majority of the world’s peoples.

Challenge 20/20 sparks "net" gain in problem-solving
NAIS invites all schools to join in the Challenge 20/20.

Challenge 20/20 students convene in Costa Rica
From June 22–27, NAIS Challenge 20/20 program participants from around the world traveled to Costa Rica to attend an intensive six-day Institute for Student Leaders (ISL). According to Paul Miller, NAIS director of global initiatives, “The ISL not only offered students and faculty a wonderful opportunity to connect with people from other countries, but to learn firsthand about nonviolent conflict resolution and environmental sustainability — two things for which Costa Rica is justly famous.” This year’s Institute was hosted by the United World College in Santa Ana.

Coloring Our Maps
What if each of us had a metaphorical map in our brain and heart; one that we could "color in" as each new experience brought us closer to understanding countries and cultures other than our own?

Demonstrations of Learning for 21st-Century Schools
One year ago, I wrote a piece entitled “An Education President for the 21st Century,” in which I cited current scholarship on the skills and values that will be necessary for students to succeed and prosper in these turbulent and ever-changing times. All five of the sources cited were in extraordinary agreement about the six basic skills and values that will be expected and rewarded in this century. Since the publication of that article, a sixth influential work has been released — The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need — And What We Can Do About It, by Tony Wagner, co-director of the Change Leadership Group at Harvard University — with virtually the same list of skills and values.

Developing Sustainable Schools
At NAIS, we believe it is essential to push for a multi-dimensional definition of school sustainability, to expand the term’s meaning in several directions, in a conscious move to make independent schools stronger and more publicly accountable institutions. While it may seem to some to be an idealistic goal, we believe that it is, in fact, a survival imperative.

Diversity 15 Years from Now
Let’s be fair. In the last 20 years, schools have made valiant attempts at improving their climates and cultures, diversifying their student bodies, and becoming more inclusive learning organizations. Most have become more serious and focused in their approach, think about issues more deeply, and approach diversity in a broader and more inclusive manner. And we can celebrate our many pockets of excellence within our schools. But, we must also question why sustaining these efforts and maintaining momentum spiral into complexity and uncertainty. As we journey towards the future — let’s say 2020 — we must approach diversity from strength and not get bogged down by past failures, guilt, or recrimination.

Environmental artist captures carbon-neutral journey
The Cambridge School of Weston (Massachusetts) hosted a unique, interdisciplinary art series at its Thompson Gallery, on the theme of "Sublime Climate — Addressing Global Warming."

Free environmental resources from NAIS
NAIS has been building up its resources on environmental sustainability.

Getting Perspectives
Why do I teach the Middle East? I don't want one of my students to be the only person in the room that doesn't know the other side of the story.

Global Citizenship Eco Summit
The Global Citizenship Summit was convened at the Green School in Bali in mid-November 2008. The Green School was the perfect setting to host the summit as it is located on 20 acres of lush, green land and all of its buildings — including the classrooms, auditorium, cafeteria, and faculty housing — are built from sustainable and environmentally conscious materials such as bamboo, recycled glass, Balinese mud walls, and Balinese grass, and it is powered by alternative energy.

Global Education Benchmark Group launched
How do you measure the degree of global education in your school? On May 23–24, 2008, the directors of global education from 16 independent schools from across the nation gathered at Cape Henry Collegiate School (Virginia) for the inaugural conference of the Global Education Benchmark Group.

Hoops for Haiti
When the 2010 New Year rang in with a seismic bang on January 12, signaling the terrible 7.0 earthquake that rocked Haiti’s Port-au-Prince capital, students at The Colorado Springs School (Colorado) sprang into action. They organized a fund-raising event, “Hoops for Haiti,” which raised $1,741 for Partners in Health, a medical organization with 20 years’ experience in grassroots health delivery in Haiti.

How change leadership can make a difference
Many independent school educators talk about change leadership, but what is it, exactly? NAIS has published a book to answer that question. “To manage today is to manage change,” writes editor James Tracy in his preface to Why Change? What Works? The NAIS Guide to Change Management. “The social, demographic, economic, regulatory, cultural, technological, and global contexts of our schools are not only rapidly shifting, but also doing so with accelerating speed. We manage amidst a whirlwind of transformation.”

Innovative programs spring from Edward E. Ford grants
The Edward E. Ford Foundation continues to be a big supporter of independent schools, particularly through its Educational Leadership Grants. In April 2009, the advisory committee of its board approved grants of $250,000 to four NAIS-member schools.

Integrity: Does It Really Matter?
Over the 18 months between spring 2005 and winter 2006, the Institute for Global Ethics (IGE) visited exemplary independent high schools in both the U.S. and Canada. These schools were nominated because of their successful efforts to balance attention to academic rigor and to the ethical development of their students. As a nonpartisan, nonsectarian nonprofit dedicated to "promoting ethical behavior in individuals, institutions, and nations through public discourse, practical action, and research," IGE has a vital interest in schools that pay equal credence to academics and ethics. Like the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) — which consistently emphasizes that tomorrow's leaders must be grounded in integrity — IGE wants to dispel the notion that only "cut-throat, win-at-all-costs" cultures provide the highest academic preparation for college and the work world.

ISL Moved to Costa Rica
The 2009 NAIS Institute for Student Leaders (ISL), originally scheduled to run in Mumbai, India, has been moved to Costa Rica. The Global Youth Leadership Institute (GYLI) — which runs the program with NAIS — made the changes following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. GYLI has been delivering successful programs in Costa Rica every year since 2005, so the 2009 NAIS ISL will continue to build on this reputation for excellence in programs. The 2009 ISL will include many positive changes and improvements from past programs. Students and teachers will benefit greatly by meeting people from around the world dedicated to social justice, environmental sustainability, and collaborative leadership.

Join the Challenge 20/20 program
We invite your school to sign up for the 2009–2010 Challenge 20/20 program. Last year, 450 schools participated. In its fifth year, this Internet-based international education program partners schools from the U.S. with schools from other countries to find local solutions to global problems.

Jordanian Academy supports U.S. School for Ethics
The School for Ethics and Global Leadership (SEGL) — a semester-long college-preparatory opportunity for 32 students who reflect the diversity of the United States — is primed to open its doors in Washington, DC this fall. The school selects geographically, racially, and socio-economically diverse students who have shown outstanding character and scholastic ability and provides them with a unique curriculum that emphasizes ethical thinking skills, leadership development, and literacy in international affairs.

Making the China Connection
This spring, NAIS will lead its fifth annual China Connection trip to hire Mandarin teachers for independent schools. The China Connection Program is an initiative that NAIS developed in cooperation with HANBAN, a government-funded agency that promotes the teaching of Chinese language and culture. Through this initiative, heads of schools from across the United States have the opportunity to visit China to interview and recruit Mandarin Chinese teachers, and to experience Chinese culture and travel firsthand.

NAIS Launches New Online Community for Teachers
NAIS launched its new Teachers of the Future online community in January 2009. This community for independent school educators features discussion forums with 24 educators who exemplify excellence in teaching — through their leadership, innovation, and commitment to environmentalism, equity and justice, globalism, technology, and other key areas of sustainability.

NAIS Resources to Help Schools Survive and Thrive
Psychologist and change-management expert Rob Evans offers advice for school leaders managing anxiety among faculty and parents during this period of financial turmoil in "Surviving and Thriving in Hard Times." The article, which also offers tips for communicating in a crisis, can be found on the NAIS website: www.nais.org/go/finance.

New conflict resolution case studies for independent school students
Carl Hobert heads the Axis of Hope Center for International Conflict Prevention at Boston University. There, staff members and students write “intellectual outward bound” conflict resolution case studies and offer creatively designed conflict management and prevention workshops for both students and educators in middle and high schools around the globe.

Perkiomen forges community and corporate partnerships
Community service provides a valuable component of educational programs and a “complete” college application, but what are students learning from their time volunteering? Students ingrades five through eight at The Perkiomen School (Pennsylvania) learned the value of creating partnerships while collecting books to establish English language libraries in the African country of Swaziland. They collaborated with FedEx, a marketing volunteer, and several companies in the community — all of which gave them valuable experience.

Practices in Substantive Culture Learning
Practices of non-global educators vs. practices of global educators

Radio City Music Hall: Rockin' the ReNAISsance
A record crowd of educators streamed into New York City intent on "Embracing the Educational ReNAISsance" at the NAIS Annual Conference held on February 27 through March 1, 2008. The largest conference in NAIS history offered a rich and varied program, including a Global Education Summit, major international-class keynoters, 173 workshops, unique Classrooms of the Future demonstrations, and a new Teaching and Learning Symposium.

Reader Response to This Issue
"Effective Leaders Show Respect

Review of Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time, by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin
The best book on education this year — and certainly the most popular — contains hardly a word about curriculum, and none at all about pedagogy. In Three Cups of Tea, you will not find a mention of whole language versus phonics, traditional versus revisionist history, cooperative learning, or high-stakes testing. But you will find a case that education is the highest-stakes endeavor a visionary Westerner, or a Pakistani village, can undertake.

Service Learning in the Dominican Republic
There is no better way for educators to learn about service learning than to experience it themselves. The LiveLearning 2009 third annual “Train the Trainers” service learning workshop in the Dominican Republic takes this approach, immersing participants in an intensive service experience in order to learn how to coordinate future service learning programs for students at their schools.

Sorting It Out
Activist Tom Hayden, in a speech to the Cum Laude Society that was reprinted in the magazine in 1979, puts it another way, "The people of the 1970s have learned too much; they are in the shadow of the knowledge of the 1960s."

Still, to read back issues of Independent School from the 1970s is to enter a world with its own set of concerns. The Vietnam War would come to a ragged end, Richard Nixon would resign in shame, the U.S. economy would tank, an energy crisis would suddenly erupt, and the lingering distrust for the Establishment — or at least the way the Establishment behaved — forced a deep introspection by the nation and by its schools. If the 1960s were rebellious years, the 1970s were disquieting years — a nation puzzled by where it had just been, and anxious about where it was going.

Swain School teaches tolerance through Holocaust program
In 2008, The Swain School (Pennsylvania), a pre-K–8 independent day school, launched an integrated Holocaust studies program in its middle school. Prior to this, the Holocaust had been taught in isolation in various places in the curriculum. Since studying the Holocaust can be complex and emotional, the need was there to create a more comprehensive program that tackled not only Holocaust studies but also issues of tolerance and acceptance.

Teaching our students to be cultural anthropologists
Ten years ago, inspired by cellist Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, which serves as a catalyst to promote innovation and learning through the arts, we launched an integrated Middle School World Music, Arts, and Culture curriculum at Brimmer and May School (Massachusetts). It not only introduced our students to China and the Silk Road, but also to Africa and Latin America, allowing us to help fulfill our mission to educate our students globally.

The Art of Arguespeak
In the days following September 11, 2001, schools throughout the country did something extraordinary: they stopped what they were doing, put their lessons plans aside, and began to talk; first about what was happening, then about the sense of loss so many of us felt, and finally about what these events might mean for our country and the world. The faint outlines of a truly national curriculum; one that was problem-based, open-ended, and driven by a spirit of urgent inquiry; came briefly into view.

The Big-Picture Board
At one point in my career, I found myself serving on six boards simultaneously. Each board was a nonprofit and most had recruited me for similar reasons. Yet I observed that, over time, I came to function and behave quite differently on each board. I was the same person with the same skill sets, so what motivated me to give more of myself on some boards than on others?

The Changemakers
In the summer of 2008, students and faculty from Phillips Academy (Massachusetts) toiled for Niswarth, a community service program where students travel to Mumbai for three weeks to study urban development and serve in one of Asia’s poorest areas. “Niswarth” is the Hindi translation of Phillips Academy’s motto non sibi or “not for self.” I developed this program as a part of the academy’s ongoing effort to embrace global responsibilities and citizenship in a concerted way. More than anything, I wanted the program to make a difference in both the lives of the those who serve and those who are served — to move way beyond those travel programs that seem more like cultural tourism, “feel good” experiences, and résumé-builders for high schoolers.

The Dynamo and the Singularity
Reading The Education of Henry Adams today, one can't help but note that Adams' vision of humanity's self-creation is on the cusp of being achieved. The science that brought us the early communications tools have now brought us to the brink of being able to engineer artificial intelligence and, indeed, our own evolution. But, contrary to Adams' fondest hope, we now have considerable cause as educators to regard these developments with a shudder. And for education in the 21st century, the manifold implications of our self-made scientific dynamo can only be explored after assessing the profundity of the transformations underway and anticipated.

The Global Schoolhouse: Education for Global Citizenship
Fareed Zakaria, tapped by Esquire as "one of the 21 most important people of the 21st Century," is no stranger to independent schools, having delivered keynote addresses at the past two NAIS Annual Conferences. Editor of Newsweek International, columnist, author, and television analyst, Zakaria covers the global beat and America’s ever-changing role on the world stage.

The Global Schoolhouse: Reading, Writing... Rwanda?
Like Superman, Carl Hobert leads a double life. By day, the earnest 45-year-old can be spotted in the halls of Belmont Hill School (Massachusetts), his blue blazer flapping over khaki pants as he races to teach a French or Spanish class. But by night, he is flying to Rwanda, Norway, or Mexico — on a one-man mission for peace, propelled by a 15-year-old's plea that "the world is really messed up."

The Great Wall of Education
While there are many new private, for-profit Chinese schools, most Chinese students are in the public system and are, by law, supposed to attend school from grades one through nine. The goal, as in the U.S. public school system, is to offer a basic education to all children. But this system is seriously flawed and, ultimately, favors the intelligent urban child.

The Multiplier Effect
“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African Proverb

The Revolution Is Not Over
Editor’s Note: The following is an edited version of a speech delivered at the 2009 Mediterranean Association of International Schools (MAIS) Annual Conference in Florence, Italy. It is reprinted with permission of the author.

The School for Ethics and Global Leadership completes its first lap
The School for Ethics and Global Leadership (SEGL) is an innovative semester-long residential program for juniors based in Washington, DC.

The virtual science fair
The middle school science fair has gone virtual. The Virtual Science Fair allows students to shift from the traditional science fair, which is totally physical in nature, to a hybrid science fair that allows for virtual modes.

Transformational Leadership
In a world rapidly undergoing change, organizational leaders need to be forces for, on the one hand, calm and optimism, and, on the other hand, vision and collaboration. In other words, they are increasingly required to capitalize on the current cultural transformations in ways that inspire all constituents within the organization to work together toward new goals, while helping everyone feel secure in the knowledge that this new way is, indeed, the best way.

West meets East at the Global Connections Seminar
The 11th Annual Global Connections Seminar met in Chiang Mai, Thailand, from June 25–30, 2008. The theme, “West Meets East,” reflected the belief that there is much the West can learn from the East as well as vice versa.

What Is Education For?
It seems clear that achieving sustainability — the ability of the human species to stay around for the long haul — is not about having more knowledge or disseminating more data about the depth of the problems. Neither is it about enacting stricter laws or mobilizing around great or small cataclysms — by definition an endgame. The threat is in the small but steady erosions draining our natural and social capital, the incremental almost unnoticed extinctions tearing the fabric of living systems, the millions of individual actions that seem innocent and without consequence until the accumulated effect weighs in years later. To fight problem-by-problem is to battle the mythical 12-headed hydra. "A sustainable society," notes Franz Rauch, "will only be achieved through a social process of searching, learning, and shaping." In other words, an educational process.

What Kind of World Do We Want?
Curriculum begins with purpose, and purpose, in part, grows out of the fundamental premises on which a society is constructed. Necessarily, curricula are fashioned for utilitarian purposes such as imparting writing and mathematical skills, and now computer skills, and those other disciplines, such as language, history, religion, and the arts, that help us to know who we are. But how we teach them and what we include within each area should reflect larger visions of what kind of world we want.

When the Students Lead
For a world awakening to stark news concerning global environmental issues — climate change, inadequate supplies of clean drinking water, species endangerment and eradication, sharply steepening demands on our limited natural resources — it is a time of extraordinary alarm and potential. Increasingly, we adults recognize that we have failed to properly steward our natural resources, and the consequences are looming for the planet. It will be up to our children, and their children, to restore balance to our ecosystems even as our human impact threatens to place exponentially greater strain on the environment in the next century.

Where in the world is José the Bear?
S t. John’s Episcopal Day School (Florida) is big on global education. So big that it has sent a group of teachers to various parts of the world on learning missions, dubbed “Travel through Space and Time.” The teachers from the pre-K–6 school visited China, Egypt, Costa Rica, and Peru. But the most important traveler in the group was José the Bear, the school’s mascot, and now a seasoned global educator.

Why Teach India?
In early April 2008, six educators from Boston independent schools met to discuss how they teach India in their respective disciplines. Two were developing curricula for an interdisciplinary course; two were building a service-learning program; one was thinking about teaching ancient religious texts; and one — a former economist for the World Bank — was designing case studies for classroom use on India’s role in the global economy. Varied in their approach, these teachers shared two common goals: they wanted to make a case for the inclusion of India in high school curricula and identify classroom practices that would support the teaching of a non-Western culture.

Why Teach India?
The rise of India’s role in the world has inspired a group of teachers to launch Educators for Teaching India, an organization that seeks to create dialogue about, and enhance the teaching of, India in public and private schools.

World Standards, Local Standing
If adding Advanced Placement courses has been seen by many schools and school systems as a silver bullet, the International Baccalaureate — the “IB” — is a flaming arrow of gold. Above all, the International Baccalaureate is a complete package, an interconnected array of curricula, professional development programs, examinations, and school support mechanisms extending far beyond the trademark-protecting standardization efforts of the AP. Charles Fremuth, longtime IB coordinator at Detroit Country Day School (Michigan), describes the IB as “an attitude about education.” With programming that spans the years from pre-primary up through secondary, the International Baccalaureate offers an education based on a comprehensive, academically challenging curriculum that claims to honor depth over breadth. Rick Grier-Reynolds, IB coordinator at Wilmington Friends School (Delaware), goes so far as to describe the program as “being all about best practices in teaching, learning, and training. Anyone who wants to get into 21st-century learning should take a serious look.”

Independent School Magazine Issues

Becoming a Healthy School
A high-quality school is not driven by test scores or hard classes. Quality schools, first and foremost, care deeply about the children who walk through the front door every day. They happily meet children at their own level and work hard to help each child grow emotionally and intellectually. They want children to feel safe, feel connected, feel cared for. Schools know this and most work hard at it every day. But we worry that the larger question of what makes a healthy school is often suppressed in the national debate about education. In this issue of Independent School, we wanted to give space to those who can help change the nature of this dialogue.

Leadership for Change
It's a dramatically changing world. Today's independent school leaders can change and thrive, or resist and merely survive. Maybe. This issue focuses on those leaders who respond to changing times by becoming agents of change themselves.

Missions, Mantras, and Meaning
"When things are going well, it's fairly easy for us to hold on to our missions as written long ago. But when the wolf is at the door, it's another matter. We have to choose to either clarify what we do or reinvent ourselves. Serious work either way." — Michael Brosnan Editor, Independent School This issue of Independent School looks at school mission statements and examines the breadth of their functions — from marketing slogans to creeds.

School Culture and Climate
This issue of Independent School looks at independent schools' hidden curriculum, the environment we create for learning and the culture in which we conduct our teaching.

Sports and Learning
On the surface, sports are about competition — winning and losing. But, clearly, sports contain a more serious purpose, too. Broadly speaking, sports — particularly youth sports — are crossroads of character and controlled laboratories of interpersonal and inter-group conflict. The competitive drive that has helped us prosper as a species, but also threatens to annihilate us, forces each generation to confront great moral questions as they make their mark. And these questions are often introduced to children and young adults for the first time on the fields, rinks, mats, and hardwood courts. Ideally, we can help to positively direct that drive.

What We Teach, Part 2: The Rise of Science, the Media, and Globalism — and Their Implications for Educatoin
Help the young learn to take care of themselves daily. Help them learn to harness their curiosity and creativiity. Let them sleep each night. Let them eat healthy food. Let them explore the world, and the world of ideas, each day. Let them come to understand both the importance of and the imense challenge of balancing their individual lives with the broader needs of humanity. Let htem know they are loved. Let them read. Let them play. Let them make mistakes and learn from them. Let them come to see that work can be deeply fulfilling at any age — if approached with the right understanding of work's purpose. And let them learn to stay in touch — to care for and support family and friends and to be engaged members fo their communities with a deep appreciation for the myriad ways community members hold each other up and connect across the globe.

What We Teach: Part 2
Help the young learn to take care of themselves daily. Help them learn to harness their curiosity and creativity. Let them sleep each night. Let them eat healthy food. Let them explore the world, and the world of ideas, each day. Let them come to understand both the importance of and the immense challenge of balancing their individual lives with the broader needs of humanity. Let them know they are loved. Let them read. Let them play. Let them make mistakes and learn from them. Let them come to see that work can be deeply fulfilling at any age — if approached with the right understanding of work's purpose. And let them learn to stay in touch — to care for and support family and friends and to be engaged members fo their communities with a deep appreciation for the myriad ways community members hold each other up and connect across the globe.

Series Documents

CAIS Connections Newsletter
Click here to read the Fall/Winter 2007-2008 issue of the CAIS Connections Newsletter from the Chinese American International School (California).

Educating for Global Citizenship
Twenty-first century independent schools must prepare students to be knowledgeable, compassionate citizens and effective leaders within a rapidly transforming world. This objective requires an understanding of one’s own culture while extending well beyond the boundary of the nation where instruction occurs. Such schools....

Heard on the Listserves: Class Size Limits
This monthly feature highlights topics of discussion featured on NAIS’s member networking lists (listserves) -- specialized e-mail discussion groups that provide forums for rich information exchange and idea sharing. Spotlighted in this document is limits on class size.

Heard on the Listserves: Educational Practices for the Future
This monthly feature highlights topics of discussion featured on NAIS's member networking lists (listserves). Spotlighted in this document are educational practices for the future.

Saint Mark’s School Strategic Plan (Sample)
This is a sample strategic plan shared by Saint Mark's School (California).