One World Launches Global Connections Program at Washington Irving School

As reported in The Hudson Independent by Rick Pezzullo

One World re­cently launched its Global Con­nec­tions Pro­gram at Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing In­ter­me­di­ate School in the Tar­ry­town School Dis­trict with nine class­rooms join­ing the pro­gram. The pro­gram con­nects stu­dents to their peers in Ecuador in an ef­fort to bring them to­gether to learn with and from one an­other.

“Stu­dents had a chance to meet their ea­gerly awaited vir­tual pen pals. As faces lit up with ex­cite­ment, they par­tic­i­pated in en­gag­ing con­ver­sa­tions, dis­cov­er­ing shared in­ter­ests, in­clud­ing a mu­tual love for fast food, among other cap­ti­vat­ing top­ics,” said Sharon O’­Grady, prin­ci­pal of Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing In­ter­me­di­ate. “More­over, stu­dents were cap­ti­vated by the in­trigu­ing rev­e­la­tions about their peers in Ecuador, ex­pand­ing their un­der­stand­ing of di­verse cul­tures and fos­ter­ing new­found con­nec­tions.”

One World be­lieves that ma­jor­ity-mi­nor­ity school dis­tricts have a dis­tinct com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage when it comes to the de­vel­op­ment of cross-cul­tural un­der­stand­ing and global com­pe­tence. Over the course of the past 10 years, One World has de­vel­oped three char­ac­ter-based, fu­ture-ready pro­grams; Global Com­pe­tence, Fi­nan­cial Readi­ness, and Tech­nol­ogy Aware­ness, which are de­signed to pre­pare K-12 stu­dents for un­prece­dented op­por­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges of our 21st-cen­tury world.

Global Com­pe­tence brings to­gether three ed­u­ca­tional dis­ci­plines—global ed­u­ca­tion, char­ac­ter ed­u­ca­tion, and ser­vice-learn­ing. Stu­dents are brought to­gether in a club or class­room set­ting once a week for an hour where they are ed­u­cated on Global Aware­ness. Through Fi­nan­cial Readi­ness stu­dents learn to think se­ri­ously about their re­la­tion­ships with money. In Tech­nol­ogy Aware­ness stu­dents and ed­u­ca­tors are brought to­gether to un­der­stand the tech­nol­ogy around them.

“One World is a se­ries of pro­grams de­signed to help not only stu­dents but also ed­u­ca­tors nav­i­gate the chang­ing world around them,” said Su­per­in­ten­dent of Schools Ray Sanchez. “I’m ex­cited to im­ple­ment these pro­grams in the Pub­lic Schools of the Tar­ry­towns. I feel it’s ben­e­fi­cial as it helps many peo­ple learn from one another.”

Sev­eral years ago, One World re­ceived a grant from Westch­ester County to pro­mote its One World global com­pe­tence pro­grams in school dis­tricts. At that time, they part­nered with Sanchez in Os­sin­ing where they were for­tu­nate enough to build a suc­cess­ful re­la­tion­ship. Now that Sanchez is in Tar­ry­town he has de­cided to bring these pro­grams to the dis­trict.

One World is in­tro­duc­ing a pi­lot pro­gram called Ar­chi­tects of Abun­dance, a new sig­na­ture class that is 10 years in the mak­ing and will be of­fered for the next 26 years.

“We very much ap­pre­ci­ate Su­per­in­ten­dent Sanchez’s vote of con­fi­dence in us as we roll out this pi­lot pro­gram to ed­u­ca­tors and stu­dents in Brazil, Ar­gentina, Mexico, China, Ecuador and the US,” said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from One World.

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