There’s a movement building around you, whether you know about it or not. Teachers from all over the country are making their classrooms global. Students are expanding their viewpoints, interacting across language boundaries, and producing work for an international audience. Global education is here.

Last weekend, I was honored to return to DC to lead a workshop for some teachers from this year’s cohort of the Teachers for Global Classrooms (TGC) program.  It focused on using technology for global education, so participants had opportunities to share their ideas in a variety of low tech and high tech formats. It’s impossible not to be inspired by these teachers. Here’s a taste of what these global education leaders had to say, using a variety of communication methods:

Texted in (using PollEverywhere):

• “I invite parents to join my Pinterest page to see what we’re doing in class.”
• “I demonstrate google translate to my parents at back to school night so even my non English speaking parents can communicate with me.”
• “We just finished human rights unit… I could have them do vlogging of an issue they think needs more awareness”

Worn on a sticker:

• OFFER — I can help you with “infusing humor into PP Presentations.”
• REQUEST — I would like help with “a good, easy, free blog site for students.”
• OFFER — I can help you with “using Edmodo for discussion.”
• REQUEST — I would like help with “establishing penpals.”

Written on a post-it:

• “Create a Facebook page for after school clubs. Students can share events / info / thoughts.”
• “Create a class blog to highlight content covered in class. Post discussion questions and ask students to comment for homework.”

Added to a Shared GoogleDoc:

• “I would love to collaborate with other teachers on incorporating themes and texts of Shakespeare and how other countries view Shakespeare.”
• “I want my students to create videos explaining different political concepts so they and other AP Gov students can use them to review for the exam.”

Written on a balloon and thrown around the room:

• “Discuss, analyze, critique, and post to an online book study forum.”
• “Create online content to debate a controversial issue and let the classes decide about who won the debate.”
• “Six word sentence vocabulary review.”

Filmed on Vine:

Below you can see their actual words. Teachers shared some pitches on Vine to send off to international teachers who might want to collaborate — know anyone that can help out these enthusiastic educators?

I left the workshop even more inspired. And OK, I’ll admit it — I am finally starting to fully embrace this new identity as a leader in the global education movement. I owe it all to the Teachers for Global Classrooms fellowship. During my final symposium in Washington DC last year, I thought the experience was over. It turned out to be just the beginning.

Over the past year, opportunities have multiplied exponentially. I’ve pushed the boundaries of how I teach, given talks for teachers from all over the world, and worked with amazing practitioners like Julia de la Torre of Primary Source and Veronica Boix-Mansilla of Harvard’s Project Zero.  I feel so grateful for all that TGC has helped me to achieve, and look forward to hearing about this new group of teachers and their accomplishments. Even though my time meeting this year’s TGC teachers was brief, something tells me our paths will cross again. After all, we’re all part of the same movement.

Note: If you want to see the presentation slides from this workshop, feel free to check them out here.