[11]I am not a big fan of tater tots. But last week at a cafeteria in Arkansas, I agreed to eat some in order to continue a conversation. I was sitting with an eccentric high school teacher and, as we ate, she told me how Walmart and the chicken industry had led many new citizens to settle in Northwest Arkansas. Over the past ten years, she had noticed that as more and more jobs became available in these industries, more and more students from Mexico and the Marshall Islands enrolled in her school.
When we finished our salad, tater tots, and conversation, I followed the teacher back into her classroom. I watched her use The Jungle Book to teach English vocabulary to students from India, Mexico, and the Marshall Islands. As I observed a Spanish-speaking boy intently studying a picture of Mowgli and Baloo, I couldn't help but think of a conference that IREX had held the previous week in Washington, D.C..
We had convened a group of teachers from across the US to discuss ideas for internationalizing classrooms. Many voiced frustration that some of their colleagues still thought that international affairs were peripheral to the core curriculum. “How can you teach about Kyrgyzstan,” their fellow educators challenged, “When we have to finish "To Kill a Mockingbird?” Despite this type of resistance, the assembled teachers were passionate about making their students more aware of international literature, history, and human realities. Observing the classroom in Arkansas might have given them some ideas.
As I watched, the teacher allowed her ESL students to incorporate references and even language from their Hispanic, Micronesian, and South Asian cultures into her brainstorming activities and vocabulary lessons. In her discussion of The Jungle Book, she paused to ask if any of them had lived in places near a jungle. A student from Central America said that he once visited a rain forest. As if on cue, the teacher seized this opportunity to introduce the concept that "jungle" was a synonym for "rain forest." Watching this exchange underscored an obvious truth: achieving a global perspective in our classrooms can begin by acknowledging the students in front of us. I was admittedly surprised by how international-feeling Arkansas could seem.
This teacher helped me realize that tapping into the perspectives of international kids gives educators a natural entry point to consider other faraway regions. Discussions of Mexico can jump start conversations about Mongolia. A teacher in Portland, Maine can ask her Somali students how their experiences compare to those of Jordanian refugees. Students from the Marshall Islands might be familiar with their own nation's colonial history, and this can become a launching point for a conversation about imperialism in Ghana.
In the end, maybe eating that All-American tater tot was worth it. It helped me reconsider the global possibilities that exist in somewhat unlikely spots in our own country.
Amy Ahearn [11] is a Program Associate at IREX