Several years ago at St. Andrew's Episcopal School (Mississippi), we piloted a unique global program — an exchange between St. Andrew's students and those in a partner school in Ghana. Unlike traditional exchanges, the Ghanaian program emphasizes collaborative and reciprocal service — with students from Mississippi heading to Ghana and students from Ghana coming to Mississippi. We see this as an opportunity for participating students to learn about each other, about the two countries and their respective communities. By living, learning, and working together, students on both sides of the Atlantic could develop deeper self-awareness and stronger self-confidence as they simultaneously develop a greater understanding of the world and their roles in it.
Soon after initiating the pilot program, two parents at St. Andrew's offered to make a gift to support the school's global programs. At the initial meeting, the prospective donors already had some ideas in mind. Born and raised in Scotland, one of them knew a principal (or head teacher as they are called in the United Kingdom) who was leading a high school on the East Coast of Scotland, in Carnoustie. They had attended university together and had remained good friends and in contact over the years. Apparently, they had been discussing some of what we were doing at St. Andrew's, and wanted to see what else we might do with additional financial support.
I described the Ghanaian program, proudly, and proposed a similar exchange between St. Andrew's and the school in Scotland. Because I see this as a great model, I was expecting an enthusiastic response and an instant support. But the donors took me by surprise. "Is that all you can do?" they said.
This simple invitation to think bigger opened up our thinking. We could take the same model and build on it. Instead of two legs, this new program could have three. We would preserve all of the advantages of the collaborative and reciprocal service model while adding a new twist, a visit to a third site where students and faculty from both schools would have to rely and lean on each other and on the relationships and experiences that they had developed in the two earlier legs in the respective local communities — all the while learning and sharing together and serving others. Thus, our Scottish partners could come to Mississippi and spend two weeks in residence at St. Andrew's, working with our students and faculty in our local communities. Several months later, the team from St. Andrew's could travel to Scotland to have a similar set of experiences there. Then, during the summer, students and faculty from both schools could reconvene as a group and travel together for a joint service project someplace else, where neither group had been and, ideally, for the sake of growth.
Three sets of exchanges later, with Rwanda as a powerful third leg, I can hardly imagine a better decision or series of outcomes. As the student and faculty feedback and debriefings attest, every participant in our three-tiered exchange has come away changed. The opportunity to learn and serve in three different contexts and to contribute to three different sets of communities has helped participants see themselves in a different light — or, more accurately, in three different lights.
In Mississippi, they immerse themselves in civil rights, blues music, and a wide range of persistent and challenging disparities (e.g., economic, educational, health, etc.), balancing their time visiting schools in the Jackson area with excursions to Natchez (a principal historical point of disembarkation for the slave trade), New Orleans, and the Delta.
In Scotland, they immerse themselves in a far longer history and balance their time in local primary schools with travel across the countryside, from Edinburgh to Glasgow and Iona to the Highlands, gaining a better understanding of Scottish identities and their connections to both the U.K. and the European Union, as well as of the historical connections between the U.S. and Scotland and the similarities and differences both within and between the two countries.
Finally, in Rwanda, the participants step off the plane together unsure of what to expect, even after briefings, film screenings, and in-depth preparation. Each day — whether in Kigali working with "street-kids" or in the countryside singing for widows and orphans from the 1994 genocide — provides new experiences and powerful lessons that will serve as shared reference points for years to come.
Taken together, and juxtaposed with each other, these three distinct but connected sets of experiences provide seven weeks of transformative education.
While all of us are "glocal" citizens, with multiple nested identities (local, state, regional, national, and global), this three-tiered exchange helps participants realize their connections to multiple communities. And once they do, they feel a greater sense of attachment and obligation to the people who live there. Their experiences affirm the value of contributing on local and global levels and of working with neighbors near and far to address the challenges we all face and to meet the needs of varied communities.
While other destinations for that third leg may someday call us, we remain connected to each other's communities in Scotland and Mississippi, which will continue to provide abundant opportunities for students and faculty from both schools to travel, learn, share, and grow together — all while remaining mindful of the opportunities and needs in multiple communities where we can contribute and serve, which is at the heart of "glocal" education and the larger endeavor of preparing young people around the world to live together well on our small planet.
This article derives from a related book chapter in Outside Solace (Bellrock Publishing, 2013).