Taking the Pathway of Empathy to Empower Global Citizens
When Jennifer Ivory, Middle School Vice Principal at Kuwait’s al Bayan Bilingual School, pauses to reflect on her school community’s approach to attaining their mission-driven goals of global citizenship, she explains that they started out in somewhat familiar territory. Just a few short years ago, the intercultural educational landscape was dotted with well-meaning isolated initiatives such as well-meaning isolated lessons and student-led events like bake-sales to raise funds for those in need.
It wasn’t long before Jennifer questioned the merits of certain well-worn traditional approaches, asking herself, “How are these showing that our students are actually developing skills they will need as global citizens?”
As a former classroom teacher who regularly tethered her instruction to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Jennifer’s first administrative steps were informed by advanced concepts she developed through professional learning experiences from Inspire Citizens, an educational support organization that promotes community action for a sustainable future.
Recognizing a Need and Inviting Partnership
Looking ahead to shifting thinking and leading the design team as part of the school’s strategic plan, Jennifer knew this would be a multi-year challenge. “We were doing bits and pieces,” she recalls. “But we thought, ‘now it’s time to team up and Inspire Citizens is perfect for this.” So she invited IC representatives to come aboard.
At the outset, the collaboration involved unifying the work of different design teams to unify efforts around intercultural learning, sustainability and diversity/equity/inclusion. And at the first major checkpoint, things are looking strong. The committed teachers of the BBS pilot teams have made a significant investment in their initial plan implementation and the results are outstanding.
“We’ve seen strong integration in 8 or 9 curricular units,” says Aaron Moniz, the lead facilitator for Inspire Citizens. “The new approaches are now expanding into co-curricular activities to dramatically improve student leadership and experiential learning.”
Jennifer is quick to note that the true measure of a school’s mission statement is seen in the mobilization of these ideals in the students’ own experiences. And Jennifer has found herself in good company at BBS.
Increasing Empathy in the Learning Experience
Leading educational transformation using the Inspire Citizen’s Empathy to Impact model in the region is Wadad el Charif. She is an Advanced Placement biology teacher and Bayan Bilingual School’s Sustainability Co-ordinator.
Incorporating her personal and professional passion for environmental issues, Wadad embraced the completeness in the E2I ideals: Care, Aware, Able, Impact. “As an AP Bio teacher, my work would often include elements of this framework, but not necessarily the complete cycle,” she explains.
Wadad suggests that the school’s current path of intentionality is opening the way for greater impact first in the co-curricular realm, but ultimately across the school landscape.
The profound growth in student-centered club activity at BBS is evidence that something is going exceedingly well. The approximately 50 members of the school’s Green Ambassadors organization function within three divisions under the Green Ambassadors umbrella, explains Wadad. Club operations focus on biodiversity, waste management and environmental awareness. Each division furnishes its own executive leadership, with capacity for research, education and communications. Every two weeks there is a large group session to share project updates and connect.
The scaling up of empathy initiatives is seen in the advanced thought that is being invested in intercultural trips. Whereas the shock of having a one-week exposure to a less materially rich culture might have had some residual educational value in the past, the reframing of experiences through the lens of empathy now brings a deeper awareness and understanding. To illustrate, Wadad shares a beautiful student response in which BBS student authors crafted a poem to reflect the meaningful relationships they had build during their time in Nepal last year.
This touching poem is an example of a student-crafted response demonstrating empathy in relationships developed as part of a community engagement opportunity.
Educating Beyond Learning Targets
If these outcomes sound a bit too idealized to be accomplished in a normal workday, Wadad offers her perspective on ultimately integrating E2I into the curriculum: “We’re just doing the same work,” she insists. “But we’re doing it differently in order to achieve something beyond just learning targets.”
With respect to seeking newer and more relevant education targets, the design team members are making frontline observations that validate their new direction. And Jennifer strongly agrees that the empathy path is the right way to go.
From her perspective, the students of today are vastly different learners than previous generations. “In their futures, universities and employers will be concerned with who they are and the attributes they embody,” says Jennifer. “This is a critical dimension of student growth that goes way beyond test scores.”
And with the dawn of the artificial intelligence age, the pressing need to ignite curiosity and care for others falls to educators more than ever before. In answer to this need, the educators of al Bayan Bilingual School will continue to open up pathways that capitalize on the distinctly human traits of caring, awareness, ability and impact.
This student artwork is made more impactful by realizing the authentic sentiments expressed in the artist’s statement below.
