Association for a global future: the Madrid connection

Key points:

Imagine this: a seventh grade student in Madrid is discussing how his class is developing an approach to water scarcity with his classmates in Mumbai, Buffalo, Buenos Aires and Astana. You might think that it is a virtual round table that rivals an UN Assembly, except that diplomats are 12 years old and probably wear sneakers.

This is the magic of the virtual exchange program Global academicsThat we have spent the last decade of nutation through global cities, a Bloomberg philanthropy program. As a founder and president of global cities, I am delighted to announce an expansion of our association with Madrid, the public schools of Spain, an effort that will help more young people to develop the elusive but essential skills of global competition: knowledge, capacities , attitudes and behaviors that will need as adult citizens to navigate an interconnected world where borders and barriers matter less than the problems they will face collectively. The OECD 2018 program for the International Student Evaluation (PISA) demonstrated That students worldwide need to develop global competition even more, which is not correlated with other areas of academic performance and, therefore, must be taught directly.

The existing Global Scholars program has already created connections between almost 127,000 students from 10 to 13 years in 119 cities in 39 nations. Student teams, which include 8 to 10 kinds of remote cities in the classrooms of approximately 300 students, have developed responses to problems such as climate change and access to clean water. They are identifying real problems that face their own communities and explore unique ways of addressing them. For example, they could interview an expert in their city to learn about the local supply chain, then exchange proposals with colleagues around the world on how to make these systems more sustainable.

Madrid, with its strong local leadership, is the perfect place to take the next steps to expand this type of educational experiment. On the one hand, more than 1,700 students in Madrid already participate annually in our existing global Scholars program and will continue to do so. For another, the city's public schools are microcosm of the world, with students whose families come from different socio -economic origins and come from Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe and beyond. The particularly innovative is how our new Madrid association will operate within the political limits of a European metropolis recognition -explained that a single community may contain crowds. For a long time it has been a family truism for Americans, by sharing as we do a land constituted by immigration, but only a relatively recently recognized reality in Europe.

The educational leadership of Madrid, believing that the diversity of the city is a source of its strength, will expand our collaboration by launching Scholars Global Madrid. They will use this new program to deliver the global academic curriculum and the program model to train more teachers and create additional classroom exchanges within the school district of Madrid.

David Cervera Olivares, the Madrid Education Officer who heads this initiative, obtains why this is such a critical job. “Our community has greatly benefited from the global cities model, and we are eager to give more students the opportunity to connect with a diverse set of classmates,” he said.

He knows that students get involved in neighborhoods, nations and even continents create cultural understanding, appreciation for diversity, global knowledge and global participation,Learning results that we have defined and measured–It must as general academic skills.

Our own country is based on the difference, on the recognition that much of our achievement as a nation depends on what we learn from each other. During the last decade, Global Cities has tried to carry out this vision in a global scenario, linking students from various cities and nations so they can learn each other. We are pleased that Madrid's educational leadership is expanding its association with us to treat the rich diversity of its own student population as an exciting opportunity to teach global competition “at home.”

So here is the young scholars of Madrid, and for the teachers who guide them with vision and heart. Not only are they preparing for a globally competent future, but they are creating it.