- The teachers would be passionate and driven with a sense of purpose.
“Good teachers and principals, in the United States and elsewhere, know that good education begins with clarity of purpose”, (
Leading for Global Competency).
“What's your purpose? What's your cause? What's your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care?”, (
Sinek)
They would be open minded to diverse cultures knowing that each culture has something to learn from. They would be willing to be travelling teachers to multiple countries. reminds me of an American IB teacher who worked in 15 countries, and finally found Bangladesh closest to his heart and retired there.
I don’t mean seeker as in seeker of truth. The teachers would be seekers of knowledge of their subject, teaching methods and how it connects with other disciples. They would deeply explore the big ideas that connect all diverse threads.
Imagine someone from developed world in a developing country! The teacher could not possibly work without being empathic to the citizens of the developing country.
As I moved from IB teaching to working with teachers in India, this is the 1st lesson I had to learn – to be empathic to Indian public school teachers, who were not exposed to the tools and techniques in teaching.
- Inter personal and Intra personal
To learn to be and work with others and to be with oneself, both skills are needed for global minded teachers. We need to be able to be with others and also be in our own silence, develop the capacity of reflection and stillness. Both feed into each other. As we learn to work with others, we develop synergetic relationships. As we reflect over our day, we develop deeper understanding of ourselves.
Teachers would be designers! They would be able to develop curriculum that integrates their subject with life skills such as needed for a global citizen. The life skill framework would be the design within which they would design the classrooms. The ‘intent’ of each class would be to focus on skills. For example, I may be teaching maths but if my class is organized around collaboration, then I would use that as a method for students to learn.
Digitization is uniting the world globally as nothing did before. To build global mind-set, teachers would need to develop ‘rational expertise’ towards integrating digital world into the classroom. I emphasize rational for one needs to be grounded in pedagogy as the mainstay of a class and digital products as a support for the same.
It would also be needed to help students develop the right way to use information on the internet. For example, I may organize a class that is based on researching information on internet, however to avoid blank copy pasting I could integrate into my rubric ‘rationale’ in order to make the students think about the material.
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