The Diversity Pick and the Gap Kids

hello

my name is diversity pick now i know

what you’re thinking

why didn’t google list this as a top

grabby girl’s

name for 2003 well that’s because my

parents wanted their first child

born outside of india to maintain a

cultural connection

and so they named me they said they gave

me the name priya

but my name isn’t the only element of

culture that i carry with me

on my first day of school i was walked

in in a dress

that was bought from an indian

supermarket hand stitched

into a sea of children just head to toe

and gap it was from this moment that i

knew i would always be set apart

if not by my height but by my culture

ascap

to culture kids was different than ours

was the occasional run-ins to pay

and now while the food’s delicious it’s

not really an authentic place to get an

experience from a different culture

but what was authentic was the

relationships that we’ve been able to

build

with korea and through other peers that

come from different cultural backgrounds

and what it has taught us is that it’s

so important to

begin to look into different aspects of

culture and what they have to offer

and that is why it’s so important that

we begin to implement global citizenship

education into our curriculum

so like chloe said we’re going to be

talking to you today about global

citizenship and more specifically global

citizenship

education so what is a global citizen a

global citizen

is someone who is actively

engaging in a local active engaging in

local and non-local

communities that are more diverse than

themselves

earlier this year i had the opportunity

to look to

start a study in the tulsa area that

looked at different schools

and global education programs in their

elementary schools

what i found is that students are

actually that schools are actually

wanting to implement global citizenship

education

they’re doing this through the ib

program through the leader in me program

and most commonly through their history

courses and through their world language

courses

however this is really unique to the

area um

as a nation globalization and studies

and humanities are actually out of

decline

the american academy of arts and

sciences found that 80

of students in the united states do not

take world language

like i said this is one of the easiest

ways to implement global citizenship

education

so why are students not doing it they

also found that 58

of middle schools and 25 of elementaries

offer global world language classes

so not only are students not choosing to

take world language courses that

are culturally immersive but schools are

not giving them the opportunity to

so throughout our research we discovered

that global citizenship education as a

whole is not being prioritized in the

united states

we’ve developed a three-part process

plan that will

re-prioritize globalization studies in

the united states

so like emma had mentioned we developed

a three process part process plan to

incorporate

global citizenship within our lives the

first step starts at adolescence and

then the next step goes to early

adulthood teenagers

and the last step is adulthood and

society

so the reason why we’re targeting

adolescents is because within this stage

of their development

they’re very egocentric and while that

may sound self-absorbed

it’s just the normal way it is and so to

kind of combat this we

wanted teachers in the classroom

environment and students specifically to

share about their cultures and their

heritage and their traditions

this way students the other students are

able to gain a more

higher level of exposure outside of

their normal interactions

and then on top of that this process

allows for

students to learn how to explore other

cultures in a way

that celebrates them rather than

appropriates them

we hope that implementing this idea

within a younger age

will allow them to carry these

sentiments on as they develop however it

is

also important to let kids make mistakes

and correct them while they’re

young so they can take on the right

methods of exploring cultures

as they grow up the next part of our

method within adolescents is

incorporating a greater

number of perspectives within a history

curriculum emma chloe and i can all tell

you that

we mainly learned about american history

until high school

where we were finally introduced to

various perspectives through world

history

and this is the case for many students

all over the united states

however once we were able to see

the other perspectives for example with

colonization we understood

that countries were going to do so in

order to advance their economy or

better improve a civilization however we

weren’t necessarily exposed to the

effects of those actions

many of which which has regressed these

uh civilizations

progression today and so by recognizing

these issues we’re able to

see or students are able to see similar

issues within their hometown

and people areas around the world by

working together to come

come up with a solution we’re able to

see that for one problem there can be

various solutions

that can be supplied with various

resources the next

um part of our global citizenship

curriculum

is allowing students to move beyond a

history curriculum and allowing them to

use their intrinsic motivation to go

find

about their cultures on their own will

the result of this is they’re more

likely to reap the benefits of

being exposed to various cultures and

they’re more likely to share it among

their peers

which not only makes them more

culturally aware but also those around

them

however cultural awareness does not stop

at adolescence and it should be

carried on through high school levels

right so like priya said it’s important

that we continue

our globalization education at into

secondary education

um three easy ways we can do this are

through organizations and clubs

and through events and through our

curriculums and our courses

first let’s talk events um one event

that we did here at jinx

was the global village event at global

village we showcased multiple different

regions of the world and within each

region we talked about different

cultural

um we talked about different cultures

that we found in our students here at

jenks

throughout the day students and teachers

and parents could come

and experience these different cultures

and we found that

lots of people got a sense of the

diversity we have in our very own

community

which is one of the main aspects of

global citizenship education

secondly we can talk about

secondly we can implement this through

our programs and through our clubs

one program we have here at jens is the

international scholars program

the international scholars program is

full of students who are

loved to be globally minded and are

actively engaging in global discussion

we talk about current events we talk

about global economics and different

cultures

it’s important that students are given

the opportunity to

actively engage with other people who

are also globally minded

it provides an opportunity for people to

be open-minded

and lastly we talk about

implementing global citizenship

education through our curriculums like

priya said

it’s important to offer many different

perspectives in our history courses

not only are students able to get a

broader scope of history

but again they’re cultivating this idea

of being open-minded

while it’s important to begin to

implement global citizenship

education at an elementary level and

also on a secondary education level

um we are obviously not going to be in

education for the rest of our lives

but we need to find ways to continue to

learn and to continue to grow

in our cultural awareness and so what

this looks like is we need to start

seeing changes within our

media news outlets the entertainment

industry

and also into big brands and large

corporations

and what this looks like is we need to

start small we need to start with our tv

shows

our movies that we watch and the

different books that we read

um a lot of times we start to see that

one cultural background

takes form and takes um the same rules

over and over again

but what we need to see is we need to

see more diversity we need to see more

roles

and more backgrounds being represented

and into these different character roles

to show kids

that you know it doesn’t matter what

background you come from

but instead you can we can all achieve

the same things and it doesn’t matter

another thing that we need to do is we

need to start implementing

um just cultural awareness and this

diversity within the media and the news

that we share

so lots of times the media that we see

in their news outlets and through

magazines

are all usually pulled from one

perspective

however this needs to change we need to

start implementing different

perspectives

into the stories that we share so that

people can feel

that they have a sense of community and

that they have someone to relate to

um a lot of the struggles and triumphs

that different cultural backgrounds go

through

need to be shared and need to be

represented again

people will feel that they have someone

to relate to and it will

build a sense of community um and not

only this but

people who are also not aware and don’t

know much about different cultural

backgrounds

we’ll get an idea of what this looks

like so then we can all learn

orbs backs this stuff and says that we

need more diversity within our media

if we truly want to

decrease the chance of bias and also

start to learn more and become more

inclusive and culturally aware

now the next thing we need to do is we

need to start looking at

creating diverse teams within large

corporations

and companies now i know this is quite a

silly example

but it is a good example of cultural

appropriation and how this lack of

diversity

has affected um our society

so kim kardashian created a brand of

kimonos at first and that was the name

that it was given

but what she didn’t realize was that

this name actually took an

important aspect of japanese culture and

she made it her own

now because she didn’t have the

diversity within her team

and these um her team didn’t have the

awareness that this could have been

offensive to someone else’s culture

they ended up again taking something and

showing basically that

they had no awareness and they lacked

this respect for other people’s culture

now by bringing in people of diverse

backgrounds we will be able to prevent

this from happening and instead

show that each and every person deserves

to be celebrated

and then we can be more inclusive and

aware of the cultures around us

so this leads us to the numerous

benefits that global citizenship

education offers

while i could not admit we don’t really

have enough time for me to go online

about all of them

i can tell you about some of them the

first of which is students are more able

to develop a nuanced form of thinking

by being exposed to multiple people from

various backgrounds we’re able to find

various

solutions to one problem the next

benefit of a global citizenship is

greater amounts of empathy

by creating personal connections with

people with various ethnicities

we’re able to form friendships rather

on a personal level rather than a

stereotype the next one

is um open-mindedness like i said

making those personal connections and

truly learning about a culture

allows us not to judge a stereotypical

event

or make assumptions about a certain

tradition

rather we’re able to respect and truly

cherish what the tradition stands for

and one last but not least is

inclusivity

by allowing more representation of

minority cultures in this majority

culture world

we’re able to give other minorities

greater confidence and be more proud of

their culture

and so within these issues we’re able to

see that

global citizenship and through education

is the best way to break

generational barriers that prevent us

from moving forward

and with all this being said it becomes

clear that change starts with you

change starts with us change starts when

we begin to realize

that global citizenship education is not

a luxury but it’s a necessity

change starts when we begin to be

accepting and open of other people’s

struggles and their hardships through

their stories

only can change start when we begin to

break down these barriers

that divide us and instead educate

ourselves on what it means to be

inclusive and an active global citizen

um their world needs a lot of gap kids

but the world also needs a lot of

diversity picks

because in the end it all gives us

something to celebrate thank you