How can I make curriculum I already teach more global?

Global education does not require teachers to abandon their existing curriculum or add an entirely new unit. Instead, educators can create opportunities for students to investigate issues from multiple perspectives, make connections beyond immediate community, communicate with others, and apply their learning to authentic practice. The goal is to help students learn through a global context.

START WITH WHAT YOU TEACH

Teaches can globalize existing lessons by changing the context, question, data, audience, or perspective without changing the required content.

Ask yourself: Where could I add another perspective without adding another unit?

Design for the four global Competencies

• Investigate the World – What can students investigate?
  • Give students authentic questions, data, problems, or phenomena that extend beyond their immediate experience.
• Recognize Perspectives – Whose perspective is missing?
  • Ask students to consider why people in different communities might understand or approach the same issue differently.
• Communicate Ideas – Who could students communicate with?
  • Create authentic audiences for student work and opportunities to communicate across cultures when possible.
• Take Action – What could students do with what they learned?
  • Move students from understanding a problem toward proposing, designing, evaluating, or implementing possible solutions.

Strategies You Can Use Tomorrow

Step 01: Globalize What You teach

Try it: Choose one lesson you already teach and add a global comparison. In my small-engine unit, students firt learn the science and components, then investigate how small-engine technology is used around the world and compare its use different contexts. Global education does not have to mean more curriculum.

Step 02: Connect Local Problems to Global Systems: Geoinquiry & Authentic Problem-Solving

Try it: Ask students to investigate a real local problem using authentic tools and data, then consider how the same challenge appears in other communities. In this project, students evaluate a local EV charging site using mapping, infrastructure, accessibility, and electrical-load data. Students are acting like consultants, selecting actual site and defending a recommendation.

Step 03: Use Comparison to Build Perspective

Present several regions rather than one “correct” context. Students in this interdisciplinary Energy Systems & AP Human Geography lesson analyze how development patterns relate to access to reliable, sustainable energy. Give students the same problem in different geographic, economic, or cultural contexts and require them to determine why the solution may change.

Step 04: Let Students Experience Another Perspective

Try it: Use a simulation that temporarily changes the rules of communication, access, or participation, then debrief the experience. Walking in Their Shoes uses communication-limited activities to help educators consider what multilingual learners may experience when classroom expectations are not accessible.

The key is to DEBRIEF after the activity.

Step 05: Build Reflection into the Routine

Try it: Add one recurring prompt to an existing warm-up, exit ticket, notebook, or reflection: What is the authentic connection? Your organizer repeats that prompt across engine basics, engine parts, global use, innovation, and review.

Global thinking does not have to happen only during large projects.

Step 06: Turn Local Experience into Global Learning

Try it: Take something students can observe locally-an environmental policy, business, infrastructure system, cultural practice, or community issue-and ask, Where else does this happe? How is it handled there? A local field experience can become global when students investigate how the issues they observe connect to systems, challenges, and communities elsewhere.

Inter-School Collaboration

Transportation Energy: Economics x Energy Systems

HOW IT WORKED:

This Fulbright inter-school activity connected my Energy & Power students with high school Economics students at another school. My partner teacher and I first met virtually to brainstorm possible connections between our courses and ultimately chose transportation energy and EV infrastructure because the topic required students to consider both technical and economic systems.

We divided responsibility according to our areas of expertise and developed a shared plan, timeline, formative assessments, and final products. Students from both schools were placed into collaborative groups and worked together through Google Meet. Economics student examined supply and demand, costs, incentives, opportunity costs, and public policy, while Energy & Power students investigated charging infrastructure, grid capacity, load management, and technological constraints. Their culminating task was to create a collaborative Canva presentation proposing and defending a realistic future transportation-energy plan. The lesson included formative checks throughout and a summative presentation with written reflection.

WHAT I LEARNED:

One of the strongest parts of the experience was the partnership between the two teachers. We worked extremely well together, maintained the schedule and instructional plan we created, and each contributed to the content expertise necessary for the project. Even when the first student meeting did not go as planned, we adjusted together rather than abandoning the collaboration.

Students were surprised by differences they discovered between the locations, and the Boston students began extending their comparisons to surrounding states. Students also began to recognize that the cost and feasibility of a technology involve much more than the purchase price. Infrastructure, energy availability, policy, geography, and economic conditions all influence whether a solution will work in a particular place.

The experience also showed me how easily Energy & Power can connect with other disciplines. Working successfully with an Economics teacher inspired me to develop a later interdisciplinary lesson with an AP Human Geography teacher at my own school.

CHALLENGES & NEXT STEPS

Our first online student meeting was chaotic. Students experimented with virtual backgrounds and treated the meeting more casually than we anticipated. Before the next collaboration, we established clearer expectations and ground rules, which significantly improved the experience.

Scheduling was another challenge. My classes follow a fixed schedule while my partner’s school schedule changed from day to day, so coordinating shared meeting times required flexibility. Interestingly, I later encountered a similar scheduling structure while in Uruguay, which gave me another perspective on the logistical challenges of collaborating across different educational systems.

Despite those challenges, the collaboration was successful enough that we plan to continue the partnership. In future projects, we will establish virtual collaboration norms before the first student meeting and build greater scheduling flexibility into the plan from the beginning.