Stefania: internationalism in schools

Here are a few things I found on the Internet.

Many International schools around the World refer to Internationalism and Global Citizenship often pairing these with Community Service, as in getting to know about the needs in less developed Countries.

Many schools refer primarily to the topics which are considered the exposed top of the cultural iceberg (food, fashion, festivals, field trips, languages, performing arts). They offer several modern languages.
www.sevenoaksschool.org/modern-languages
www.sevenoaksschool.org/internationalism

The deeper layers (values and beliefs, learning styles, non verbal communication, assumptions, norms, rules, gender roles, etc) are taken into account by schools which offer specific curricula, such as the IB program (not only as in the Diploma, but also as in the Primary Years Program and the Middle Years Program).
These schools pay particular attentions to world languages (including the native languages of the students' community), they stress a lot on activities such as the Model United Nations, as well as on study trips or teaming up with schools from other countries to promote students mobility.


Probably IBO is one of the most structured organizations in reference to an international curriculum, and offers a number of services, including teacher development. www.ibo.org
http://www.pypchatswortheast.com/internationalism.html for an example of action taken in a school.

A system to integrate Internationalism in the curriculum is Project Based Learning, also through current events and international news analysis www.bie.org

Other sources of informations are
Oxfam Education: Global Citizenship Information and Support
http://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm (for school networking in Europe)
www.global-issues-network.org/ (school networking in the World)

Also have a look at a 4 years Development Plan for Internationalism here:
http://www.sirbernardlovell.s-gloucs.sch.uk/internationalism/documents/InternationalismDevelopmentPlan.pdf
http://iew.state.gov/index.cfm


My personal experience as parent:
At AISC last year my son in Grade 6 ESL Humanities had an amazing lesson unit about Global Citizenship. He had to pick up a topic from the "underwater" part of the cultural iceberg: he chose "sense of Modesty". He had to prepare questions for an interview; he interviewed my husband and me as well as a staff member of AISC from a different Country; he reported his findings of different cultural approaches to the same issue on a poster that he later presented to the rest of the class. Each student did a similar research on different areas and I think this stretched my son's language abilities, his awareness of cultural diversity, his skills to interact with people and in general developed his ability to perceive differences and similarities on something else than just food or flags. Amazing job!
This year he regularly has to report on current events in the World that he finds in the news, and - again - this implies stepping in other people's shoes to understand the whys and hows things happen.