Global Education

     With the world connecting in so many ways, understanding others points of view and references will be critical to building business relationships and a global community; introducing a language early is important as well as teaching about different cultures and religions.  With technology, reaching out to other parts of the world has become common, building a more formal curriculum and having a system in place to connect different cultures would aid in a school becoming more global.


    We are fortunate at Kents Hill to have students from over 35 countries attend our school; our students learn so much about other cultures through these friendships. Go Global and the International program are two formal organizations that bring students together. We celebrate the Chinese New Year with fireworks and special food and have an international dinner where all the international students cook foods from their culture and serve the other students. We have an exchange program with a school in England and South Africa and during our March break students in French and Spanish III visit schools in Spain and France. We also offer Chinese classes. My daughter’s best friend is from Sweden and she is always giving me facts about the country.


     I realize that most schools do not have this diversity and even though our students are exposed to many cultures we could do a lot more to promote global studies. We are looking at having a concentration in global studies; however, the reality is all of our students would benefit from this curriculum, so it should be a school wide initiative. We could also do a better job in the classroom, making our curriculum more global in all subject areas, with all the connections we have with other countries it would make sense to use those relationships to set up more exchanges and video opportunities.