Inspire Citizens:
Partners & Mentors
We value all of our long-term partner schools, educators, organizations, and students as essential members of a global and transformative learning community and collaborative ecosystem that brings our Global Impact School model to life in diverse contexts.
We are dedicated to deep learning guided by futures thinking, sustainable development, equity, and well-being while addressing the gap between good intentions and reality, between rhetoric and results in schools and organizations.
We aim to continually reflect and evolve in order to meet the needs of our diverse partners and complex world.
Read about each unique partnership below.
Murals: Sentrock
Seoul Foreign School
This 3-5 year partnership follows a school-wide implementation of the Global Impact School Self-Study as a roadmap for attaining the school’s mission of being “dedicated to the service of others” in both the IB and British School approaches of the IPC and IMYC. SFS has also worked with Inspire Citizens to implement personalized approaches to admin systems, student leadership, curriculum enhancement, and media literacy all connected to Inspire Citizens’ frameworks while using the Self-Study as a supplemental blueprint to level-up WASC and IB accreditation for global competence. SFS is Inspire Citizens oldest and most ambitious partnership with potential visioning around an on-site professional learning center dedicated to global and intercultural competence and a Futures Media hub led by grades 6-12 student journalists and storytellers.
DCI
DCI views digital citizenship as an action, something that we need to practice and do every single day. In today's interconnected world, this is our opportunity to put global education into practice to empower others to become change makers for using tech for good in local, global and digital communities.
This IC and DCI partnership centers on eco-photography and eco-media in order to help educators and students to apply media and technology for greater compassion, understanding, and community action. By changing both the way we all see the world and how we feel on the inside about nature, others, and ourselves, we can take more meaningful action on the outside by advocating for and shaping a healthier world.
By personally experiencing this hands-on learning, all learners will be able to immediately integrate its power and relevance into designing learning experiences for all of our learners and projects directly led by kids.
Frankfurt International School
In partnership with FIS, Inspire Citizens is working to support Grade 4-12 Changemakers in curating and facilitating the inaugural March 2022 Changemakers Conference for future-focused student leadership, collaboration and systemic transformation.
Built upon the mission of informed action for sustainable development, this conference is fully student-led with FIS educators and Inspire Citizens mentoring students in developing and implementing event planning, skills and competency-based workshop delivery, and global communications learning experiences and outcomes.
More information will be available in August of 2021 on how to explore, register and participate in this exciting endeavor.
Western Academy Beijing
WAB and IC began a long-term partnership after great success with the 2020 PYP exhibition despite the challenges of hybrid learning. Now, Inspire Citizens and WAB are collaborating to develop and action research the Future Now Student Leadership Program in real-time. Working in learning communities on using Empathy to Impact in preK-12 unit design, teachers and students are energized with a greater sense of purpose, conceptual thinking, curiosity, modern literacy, approaches to learning, and informed community action.
In addition, WAB and IC are committed to spark demonstrable, transformative learning outcomes, beginning with the student-led, community exploration of a future-focused WAB alumni and the evidence of these cognitive skills and dispositions across all age groups. Finally, innovative approaches to embedded media, data, and futures literacy are also school-wide priorities alongside working with IC to co-design holistic wellness approaches strengthening the school’s advisory program, teacher well-being, and initiatives on identity, diversity, justice, and action.
Out of the Blocks Podcast
As a major inspiration for the launch of Future Media, Aaron Henkin and Wendel Patrick have worked with Inspire Citizens for years helping students embrace the value of storytelling, diverse perspectives, community engagement, photography, and local soundscapes as way for learners to open their minds to a more just and equitable society. Out of the Blocks continues to exist as mentors for Futures Media student journalists alongside their continued meta-modeling of podcasting that seeks to amplify voices and stories of marginalized individuals and communities. Out of the Blocks’ published mosaics of images, voices, and sounds helps launch students into their own inquiries around community stories “hidden in plain sight.”
Soul Work this Summer
Our friends Homa and Will at the Big Questions Institute are offering a new professional learning experience for educators that is focused on putting “soul work” before school work as we begin to come to terms with the very difficult last two-plus years we’ve experienced.
The Leadership Reboot is a self-paced, inquiry-driven journey that will help you reflect deeply on who you are now, consider ways to reset, and imagine who you might become given the continued uncertainty in the world. There’s also a live coaching and community element with Will and Homa that offers even deeper connection and collaboration with other leaders and educators from around the world, who have shared similar experiences and concerns.
If you’re looking to center self-care this summer and to build your capacity for leadership in increasingly complex times, we hope you’ll check out all the details at the BQI site.
OpenLearning Limited
OpenLearning is a cloud-hosted, lifelong learning platform that enables educators to deliver effective, enjoyable, and transformative online courses to learners. OpenLearning goes beyond content delivery and focuses on enabling interactive and engaging social learning experiences for communities of connected learners. Inspire Citizens partnered with OpenLearning since August 2021 to deliver and scale their student-centered transformative learning experiences and future-focused global citizenship through online learning.
Shonal Agarwal & Chapters International
Despite the complexities involved in shifting to hybrid professional learning, Shonal and Chapters International co-designed a plan for supporting Inspire Citizens’ webinars and interactive workshops seamlessly in Asia and Europe, prioritizing the IC strength of active learning for embedded global and intercultural competence. Shonal envisions Inspire Citizens’ pedagogy as a connector of best-practices, and an essential, foundational element of student learning in a challenging present and future.
Working with Shonal on short and long-term goals of education for sustainability and global citizenship, Inspire Citizens works towards being an integral part of Shonal’s mission: “Creating a positive impact on students by supporting teacher learning and relentlessly focusing on the finest professional development courses for educators world-wide."
Dr. Walter Greason
Dr. Walter Greason is a founding digital historian who studies the world economy. He is a Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Author and contributor to twelve books, Dr. Greason creates curriculum and community programming that inspire regional economic development initiatives around the world. His work is available online through Twitter @worldprofessor and his website. With Inspire Citizens, he works as a mentor for 21st-century economic policy, strategic foresight, and futures literacy in both student learning and the Inspire Citizens mission and vision. Dr. Greason is available for any international collaborations, especially within Inspire Citizens’ projects and communities based on local economic development for greater sustainability and equity.
Wildbound
In collaboration with Beijing-based Wildbound, Inspire Citizens co-designs and teaches tailored K–12 sustainability curricula to foster the next generation of leaders, social entrepreneurs and decision-makers that take meaningful, systemic action for the environment. With experiential learning as the focus of Wildbound’s expertise, Inspire Citizens helps to amplify this expertise into demonstrable, transformative student learning, whether in the classroom or wild. In 2021-22, Wildbound will continue to work with students via their Changemakers for Nature program while co-creating a social entrepreneurship program dedicated to deep thinking and learning through an exploration, understanding and application of circular economics, harmony with nature, equity, holistic well-being, and humane technology.
Hedreich Nichols
Hedreich Nichols is an author, educator and consultant helping educators and districts amplify the voices of all students. Her YouTube series and podcast, SmallBites, sparks international campuses to face systemic issues related to equity and cultural responsiveness in education. As an author, her Cherry Lake trade titles What is Antiracism? and What is the Black Lives Matter Movement? provide teachers with materials to help students begin to understand systemic inequities; and her upcoming Solution Tree book offers will offer pathways to help enhance teaching and learning to foster intercultural responsibility and competence. With Inspire Citizens, Hedreich works as a coach and mentor in these areas of specialty. She is regularly available to support educators and students in engaging learning experiences that launch inquiry into an analysis of the systemic complexities of racism, xenophobia, and informed actions to make change.
iReadtoLive Initiative
Since 2019, Inspire Citizens has collaborated with iReadtoLive and it’s executive director, Jacob Sule, in working towards a common mission of seeing volunteers as change makers, education as the pathway, and children as the future in helping reduce the discrepancies between rural and urban quality education opportunities in Nigeria.
Through co-facilitated workshops, our educator training aims to:
- Build empathy & community togetherness.
- Craft & pursue sustainable missions.
- Co-design contextual, professional learning & curriculum.
- Spark global competence.
- Embed UN SDGs.
- Multiply leadership and collaboration tools.
- Impact local & global communities through demonstrable growth in transformative learning and sustainable development.
Tsinghua High School International
The partnership between Inspire Citizens and THSI has been grounded in innovative thinking since day one with THSI identifying a fresh approach to education built around their concept of a Global Awareness and Sustainability Program (GASP). Starting with the co-creation of a graduate student profile and working through the lenses of the Self-Study and Empathy to Impact, GASP has been integrated from K-12 opportunities in curriculum, experiential learning, and even in THSI being a Chinese center of a Debate for Impact student series where debating is taken into the realm of informed, collaborative global action. Lastly, THSI and Inspire Citizens have sparked an in-person series of professional learning opportunities in the Beijing region with numerous goals around building a network of schools and educators committed to leading the world in conceptual inquiry and informed action for 2030.
St. Louis SDG Changemakers: Youth Action Program
The United Nations Association of Saint Louis' SDG Changemakers: Youth Action Program will foster human centered global competencies by having high school students consider and take action in addressing Saint Louis local issues and challenges through the lens of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Inspire Citizens has collaborated with student and educational leaders to design learning experiences for leadership skills which provide students with tools and resources to confidently engage with active members of the Saint Louis community, develop a deeper connection with a local issue and/or organization, and be empowered to make a positive impact on collective well-being and sustainable development. This program is a year-long commitment to service and action to help address local challenges.
Continuing and Developing in 2022-23: Partnerships, Collaborations & Inspirations
International School of Bangkok
Inter-Community School Zurich
21CLI and 407 Learning
Tri-Association
East Asia Regional Council of Schools
Jakarta Intercultural School
Dulwich Colleges Seoul & Shanghai
Modern Literacies Network
Shekou International School
Doughnut Economics Action Lab
High Resolves
AGS
Mic Drop
EduSpark
NIDO de Aguilas
AES New Delhi
IS Prague
COJOWA
NESA
Yaritza Villalba
ISS
As the nonprofit leader in international education, International Schools Services (ISS) promotes innovative best practices for global education through its core services that include starting and managing student-centered, future-oriented schools; recruiting world-class international educators; providing cutting-edge professional learning opportunities; sourcing essential school supplies; and stewarding school foundations.
ISS and Inspire Citizens are working together to co-design a comprehensive set of professional learning experiences built from the IC Master Educator Endorsement for Civic Readiness and Engaged Global Citizenship.
The strategic partnership will offer world-class explorations of tools, resources, and interactive experiences in 21 week-long modules, ranging from futures thinking, to education for inner and sustainable development, to civic literacies, and finally, to Empathy to Impact learning design for greater compassion, connection, understanding, and community action.
Francis Bizoza
Francis grew up in Uganda and has worked in education in emergency environments such as South Sudan, a nation that has faced decades of civil war. He has collaborated on education projects across the Great Lakes region. He served as a Master Teacher Program Fellow with the African Leadership Academy where he provided mentorship and professional development to teachers of Green Belt Academy in Bor-Jonglei-State, a senior secondary school run by Education Bridge. Their mission is to educate a generation of peacemakers and transformational leaders.
He has served a two-year leadership fellowship with Teach for Uganda in a rural public primary school. This experience gave him a deep appreciation for the extreme challenges that teachers and students face on a daily basis and led him to be engaged in playful, blended curriculum development for displaced children in resettlement camps in Uganda. His outstanding skills in networking and partnership building have equipped him with the experience to lead and serve in education’s vulnerable ecosystems to improve the quality of education. This has enabled him to establish a network of teachers and education stakeholders across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.
He is a graduate of Makerere University where he studied Education and his passion for quality education and providing teacher professional development has pushed him to establish an Edtech education enterprise and Teachers Empowerment Platform-TEP in Uganda that works to build the capacity of teachers to improve their skills in facilitating learning and effectively using digital tools in the classroom.
Francis is a global citizenship and education for sustainable development advocate who believes that the best way to improve the quality of education is to empower and equip teachers. Francis would be a great person to reach out to to build authentic partnerships between students as well as educators in Africa to connect, collaborate and co-create meaningful learning experiences.
Concordia International School Shanghai
CISS began working with Inspire Citizens as a way to enhance C3 Social Studies’ Standards through greater purpose and action throughout the elementary school. Over the 3+ year partnership, work has continued in the ES, but also in school-wide approaches to deeper, conceptual learning, including the design on internal professional learning modules around Empathy to Impact as a spark into a collective understanding of how to bring CISS’ Deeper Learning Framework to life. Future work includes whole school enhancement of service learning and continued support for global issues specific and applied journalism classes.
Xi’an Liangjiatan International School
In 2021-22, XLIS and Inspire Citizens will be launching a longer-term partnership centering on student agency and leadership as well as enhancing the re-imagination of transformative learning experiences in high school and the IB DP. Student curation of Future Media’s Debate for Impact and Impossible Ideas podcasts are two of a multitude of student-led innovations forthcoming. Alongside enhanced teaching and learning, Inspire Citizens will support XLIS in identifying a future-focused graduate student profile and integrate learning goals that connect the XLIS mission, IB language, and key cognitive skills and dispositions for global competence - all culminating seamlessly into forthcoming accreditations and innovations.
Videos for Change
Inspire Citizens is proud to be in partnership with Videos for Change, which is part of the High Resolves group of organizations working together to activate a deeper sense of human responsibility in young people. As part of this partnership, Inspire Citizens facilitates learning experiences with school partners and our network of educators and students to access a wealth of resources that have been created to activate and amplify the voice of youth across the world.
Compass Education
Compass Education works in alignment with the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, aiming to empower ONE MILLION educators with the tools to encourage students as sustainability advocates and systems thinkers.
Compass Education and Inspire Citizens partner to help schools, educators, and students shape the sustainable future we all wish to see. By combining Compass Education’s tools and approaches for sustainable systems thinking with Inspire Citizens’ whole-school Global Impact School model and Empathy to Impact system of teaching and learning, schools can implement a more holistic roadmap for creating positive change in student-centered learning environments.
As a key partner in the Inspire Citizens Future Now toolkit, Compass tools spark educators and students towards being informed change agents by knowing when and how to use systems tools, complexity frameworks, and how to identify leverage points for change.
Human Restoration Project
Human Restoration Project (HRP) is a 501(c)3 non-profit which aims to discuss and provide resources that illuminate, foster, and challenge traditional and progressive educational practices. It is of utmost importance that, when looking deeply into dense topics, we provide places for people to start (especially those who are not accustomed to a progressive view of education). We want to bring to to light what we’ve all seemed to forget: our students, our educators - they are human beings.
We intend to restore that lost humanity - having administrators, educators, and students remind themselves, and engage with, their purpose and dreams. HRP centers its work around four values statements:
- Learning is rooted in purpose-finding and community relevance.
- Social justice is the cornerstone of educational success.
- Dehumanizing practices do not belong in schools.
- Learners are respectful toward each other's innate human worth.
HRP offers entirely free resources, as well as a variety of services including micro-credentialing, coursework, and professional development.
Dr. Doreen N. Myrie
As a professor at the all-women’s HBCU Bennet College in North Carolina, Dr. Myrie truly lives the school’s mission in providing transformative liberal arts education connected with a deeper sense purpose, integrity, and self-worth in our complex pasts, presents, and futures. Dr. Myrie has worked on developing international collaborations that have brought students of all cultures and socio-economic backgrounds together around storytelling and sustainable development. She advises all communities on intercultural competence through intersectional learning experiences.
Institute for Humane Education (IHE)
The Institute for Humane Education’s president Zoe Weil and Inspire Citizens’ Steve Sostak met in Shanghai at the EARCOS conference in 2013, where they were both working to bring global ethical issues to the forefront of the educational endeavor. Sharing the belief that youth must become engaged in real-world learning that makes a difference, they were excited to meet and share ideas. Since then, IHE has interviewed Steve for its blog to amplify the work of Inspire Citizens alongside this partnership in helping educators and students shape a more humane future.
IHE offers free resources for teachers, including its Solutionary Guidebook and companion guide for youth, How to Be a Solutionary. IHE also offers an online Solutionary Micro-credential Program and online graduate programs through Antioch University (M.Ed., M.A., Ed.D. and Graduate Certificate).
SIMA Classroom
Inspire Citizens has partnered with SIMA Classroom to launch the annual global SIMA Student Award in the Spring of 2021. The goal of this partnership is to enhance storytelling and filmmaking skills of Futures Media learners while celebrating the impact young storytellers have on a sustainable and more equitable future. SIMAs social impact library of films are a treasure of mentor models, while working as an inspiration for students’ own creative impact media projects.
Keystone Academy Beijing
Over more than 2 years, Inspire Citizens’ time at Keystone has ranged from supporting student leaders in facilitating Global Issues Network Conferences to facilitating week-long residencies for Salva Dut, Koen Timmers, and Jacob Sule into school-wide project-based learning experiences. Now, hand in hand with educators on entire grade-level teams, Inspire Citizens supports interdisciplinary unit development in both Mandarin and English in the primary school with the goals of enhancing dual language literacy, purpose and action, and critical thinking all while innovating for what global competence can look like in a 2021 Chinese context.
Keeping the Blues Alive
Inspire Citizens and Keeping the Blues Alive are working in concert to empower students to capture the diverse sounds, stories, histories & performances highlighting the powerful influence of the Blues on musicians, artists & communities from all corners of the globe. Through Empathy to Impact and IC-led teacher training, students will experience opportunities to think and act like music historians, songwriters, performers, investigative journalists, podcast hosts, studio designers, and ethnomusicologists. The first collaborative project is entitled Journey to the Heart of the Blues.
Greg Curtis
As an author and independent education consultant, Greg has spent much of his career working with international schools around the world in all-school capacities. He has been a technology director, a curriculum and professional learning director and a strategic planner for schools in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. You can learn more about Greg’s independent consulting work here.
Independently and as an advisor to and collaborator with Inspire Citizens, Greg is invested in deep, systems-focused school improvement efforts. With over 27 years of experience working from early years through high school programs, he leads curriculum revitalization, 21st century learning, technology infusion, assessment shifts and change initiatives.
Recently, Steve and Greg have worked together on a Futures Thinking for Education set of videos, PDFs and interactive workshops designed to launch communities into present and future change drivers such as technology, globalization, economics, and social discourse. This work guides school communities towards insights and foresights for strategic visioning, setting transformative learning goals, and designing student-centered learning experiences for navigating and thriving in our complex present and future.
Luka Lesson
Whether embedded in Futures Media learning experiences, mentorships, residencies, or independently enhancing global competence through literature, hip-hop, and slam poetry, Luka Lesson has long been both an inspiration and like-minded artist in the Inspire Citizens’ partnership network. In February of 2021, Luka and Inspire Citizens will co-facilitate a hybrid media literacy and poetry workshop geared towards, “Amplifying our own voices and the voices others, so that our global narratives can continue to be powerful, poetic and of the people.” While this partnership is in its infancy, Luka’s repertoire of acclaimed poetry and writing workshops can be accessed at his site: www.lukalesson.com.au
Beijing City International School
As one of Inspire Citizens’s original partners, BCIS has made whole school commitment to embedding the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Targets plus wellness indicators across their entire school spectrum. Beginning with a professional learning launch of 400 educators engaging with SDG target cards and then working with Inspire Citizens over 2+ years to embed Empathy to Impact unit planning into curricular enhancement and informed action, BCIS has become a model school on how to integrate sustainable thinking into more relevant learning, especially highlighted in their early years’ campus. Inspire Citizens also collaborates with BCIS educators on their media literacy program, the ID8 innovative high school project-based learning experience, and their Avenir Student Social Entrepreneurship yearly conference.