Inclusion is an important topic in education. However, when it comes to education, it may not be given as much importance as it should be.
A virtual classroom for teachers from around the world to work together to create something more for their students was a difficult project to pull off, but in the right hands, it not only became possible, but it thrived. Fortunately, Jacqueline Gardy was just the person for the job.
Gardy is the director of global programs at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC, for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs' Office of English Language Programs. She was recently honored by tech & Learning during an event Regional Leadership Summit with a Innovative Leader Award for the Best Example of Virtual Learning.
Contents for comics in the classroom
The concept for this collaborative pilot project involved bringing together a number of teachers from around the world to help develop a curriculum for use in the classroom. It turned out that this curriculum focused on the use of comics. Gardy explains how the idea began to take shape.
“My supervisor gave me the green light to launch a virtual exchange pilot program on a shoestring budget,” she says. “I worked with five consultants who helped me develop the curriculum and launch it. We used a combination of Google Docs, a Google YouTube channel, and Slack (free version). We created an Adobe Spark page as a landing page. So we did everything with a low budget in mind. We decided we wanted 40 teachers from around the world to work with us synchronously online to develop content for classroom comics.”
Offering this new type of curriculum to teachers around the world helps to diversify their educational perspective and teaching methods. Using comics as a teaching tool is a novel approach to education, and the visual aspect also helps to connect with teachers from different backgrounds.
Since the pilot, 16 additional virtual exchanges have been developed with the assistance of the administration under the English Access Scholarship cooperative agreement with FHI-360 and offered by a variety of nonprofit organizations and universities. Themes have been Climate Action (with World Learning and Take Action Global), Global Perspectives in the Classroom (Azusa Pacific University), Global Citizenship in the English Classroom (UMASS Lowell), Business and Entrepreneurship in the English Classroom (Georgetown University), Differentiation for the Contemporary English Classroom (United Planet), Building Blocks for Service Learning (World Learning), Civil Communication with a Focus on Computer-Mediated Instruction (Azusa Pacific University), Developing Digital Citizenship (Azusa Pacific University and iEARN-USA), Emerging Literacies and 21st Century Skills in the English Classroom (iEARN-USA), Integrating Life and Career Skills in the English Classroom (World Learning), Future-Focused Teaching in the English Classroom (Take Action Global), and Power Skills in the English Classroom (UMASS Lowell).
How to keep teachers engaged and connected
Gardy says creating the program with everyday tools helped keep the scope of the project recognizable, regardless of who used it. But a major hurdle was keeping teachers engaged in the program given their locations and accessibility. The fact that the program came together during the beginning of the pandemic was a coincidence, but it also helped when teachers shifted to an online format en masse.
“The launch date (of the program) was March 15, 2020, right when the pandemic started and everything came to a standstill,” says Gardy. “It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because suddenly, teachers were no longer teaching full-time. They had a lot of time to learn technology skills and interact with people.”
Connecting at the beginning of the pandemic also led to educators around the world realizing how similar their COVID experiences were, leading to an already-built relationship that served as the foundation for expanding the program.
“It eventually became a conversation group that met once a week, where we all talked about our experiences with COVID as we lived through it around the world,” says Gardy. “What was surprising was how similar all of our experiences were, even though you wouldn’t think any of us had anything in common. That set the stage for more virtual exchanges.”
This project created a fundamental understanding between teachers, no matter where they were on the map. Their experiences during the pandemic and in teaching were similar, if not exactly the same.
Putting it all together
Operating an online program synchronously comes with its own challenges, such as serving teachers who live in different time zones and countries. But Gardy says having teachers in different parts of the world makes for a more diverse group.
“There are usually 40 teachers per exchange and then we split them up into four facilitators,” he explains. “So the groups were 10 teachers per facilitator. We typically organized the groups using timeline clusters along latitudinal lines to create diversity of participants, with no more than three hours apart.”
Once groups are formed, a combination of synchronous and asynchronous interactions helps groups of teachers improve their knowledge on specific topics.
“We present all the information at the beginning of the week and then we have a lot of different interactions that are synchronous or asynchronous, either in discussion forums or on Zoom calls,” says Gardy. “Then we have these reflection and application sections where they reflect on what they’ve learned and try to apply it to their classes immediately and/or their final lesson plan. They have to attend 70% of the synchronous events. If they can’t attend the synchronous events, they can watch the recording and fill out an exit ticket to show that they participated.”
Gardy's efforts demonstrate a method of global citizenship that helps educators reach out and collaborate with teachers around the world. This initiative makes education more accessible to teachers around the world, while also allowing them to make education more accessible to their students as well.
