2023 Capstone Projects
This collection of websites was developed and co-created by the 2023 NEA Foundation Global Learning Fellowship Class. Each site provides educators with essential tools to prepare students for active global citizenship in their classrooms and beyond.
Elementary General Education
Building Capacity for Global Competency Education
- For students to thrive in this ever-advancing world, these educators encouraged their students to dive into specific SDGs and share with others their goals in achieving a more equitable society. Projects focus on third grade, fourth grade, and an event for the entire school.
Restore Climate, Communities, and Humanity
- This group focused on the ability of the SDGs to restore and rebuild different aspects of society. They used Wakelet as their platform to gather resources and lesson plans to enable you to use them with your own students.
Just Like Us: The Global Impact of Windows, Mirrors & Sliding Glass Doors
- This group of academic coaches, learning interventionists, and media specialists use the metaphors of windows, mirrors, and glass doors to capture the power of reading. Through reading, you can inspire your students to be more inclusive, to be more gender equitable, and to be more aware of stereotypes and biases.
English + ELA
Learning to Inquire: Empowering Student Agency through the SDGs
- The heart of this project is to enable all educators to incorporate inquiry-based learning and studies into their classrooms. Undertaking research, investigating art, and writing about global issues are all pathways that can be built into a variety of curricula.
Developing Empathy through the Sustainable Development Goals
- Building empathy is paired with better learning outcomes for students – including better grades and more positive relationships with others. This group offers different ways to instill empathy – through service projects, virtual exchanges, literature studies, and book clubs.
Identifying and Addressing Inequalities in our World (K-12)
- Four English Acquisition and English as a New Language educators highlight how different resources can be incorporated into the classroom to enhance equalities in the outside world. They focused on four aspects of the world: local community membership, the global water crisis, social inequalities, and wealth inequalities. These projects can be tailored to fit any grade level.
Interdisciplinary
- This group of interdisciplinary educators have created a website with project-based learning activities that require creative problem solving in order to reach the needs of a diverse set of learners. Each activity focuses on a UN Sustainable Development Goal and contains an element of collaboration between students and educators across disciplines.
Music Education
- Bring the UN SDGs to your music classroom by exploring these activities created by our GLF Music educators! These activities are intended to bring global awareness to the classroom about quality education; gender equality; reduced inequalities; and peace, justice, and strong institutions.
Science
Science, Society, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
- Middle and high school science educators come together to create science activities that relate to the UN SDGs. Through SDGs 2, 12, and 13, and their connection to climate change, these teachers make the connection between science and our global society.
Social Studies
- Five social studies educators share activities and strategies to use in the classroom to equip students with the knowledge and skills to be change makers in their schools and communities. These educators want to prepare their students to be globally competent students fighting the good fight.
Creating Change Together: Making the Global, Local to Achieve the 2030 SDGs
- Five middle and high school educators recognize the importance of empowering students to become agents of change in addressing pressing global challenges, such as poverty, climate change, inequality, and environmental degradation. They provide a diverse set of lesson plans to help bring the SDGs into the classroom and across disciplines.
World Languages
Connecting Cultures with the SDGs
- World language educators come together to create activities for the classroom that incorporate authentic resources and follow ACTFL guidelines. The activities also follow the UN SDGs to bring awareness to food access, cultural history, financial inequities, and sustainable agriculture.
2022 Capstone Projects
This collection of websites was developed and co-created by the 2022 NEA Foundation Global Learning Fellowship Class. Each site provides educators with essential tools to prepare students for active global citizenship in their classrooms and beyond.
Mathematics
- This guide is intended for math teachers everywhere and helps explain what global education is, why it is important in math classrooms, and provides resources to help embed real world data into the classroom. The goal is to give students learning experiences that teach them math but also skills they will need in the 21st century.
Social Studies
Incorporating Authentic Voices
- This project focuses on five (5) main methods of incorporating authentic voices into the classroom across disciplines and subject areas. Each method has detailed instructions on how best to implement them in your own classroom.
Virtual Field Trip: White House Tour
- Educators can use this resource to help students to think about the world beyond their own classroom. Regardless of student’s English or Spanish proficiency, all students can connect with the concept of home. By the end of the activity, students should be able to answer: What is a natural or cultural place that is worth protecting or safeguarding?
Global Learning Through Storytelling
- Storytelling acts as a celebration of cultural diversity, provides students with support in their language learning, and builds self-esteem. This lesson can be incorporated within many types of units. Students will explore a resource that is either written or visual and then create and share-out a story from the perspective of a person within the resource.
- This multidisciplinary unit focuses on the cacao industry and is an excellent introduction to this worldwide community. This unit targets many critical thinking skills and focuses on several Sustainable Development Goals created by the United Nations as a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.” It includes numerous educational standards across academic subjects for 5th and 6th-grade students.
Science
- The mission of the project is to collect educator resources for all grade levels that share information on the UN Global Sustainability Goal 14; Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. On this website, educators can utilize lesson plans and literary resources for elementary and secondary students.
Developing Global Citizenship Through the Sciences & the United Nations
- The focus of this project is to incorporate global competency through the use of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals within science and agriculture classrooms. The UN SDGs provide a great opportunity to use science in the teaching of global citizenship. On this website, educators can find five different lessons that utilize different SDGs to teach global citizenship. Most of these lessons can be adapted to any age level.
Reading/ELA
Using Storytelling to Promote Action
- Through this project, fellows have compiled five different lesson plans or activities that incorporate storytelling. From digital storytelling, to personal experiences and graphic novel memoirs, educators across the K-12 spectrum can find a lesson that works for their classroom!
General
Global Competencies in Multiple Settings
- Built from a group of instructional coaches, guidance counselors, teachers of the gifted, and more, this project seeks to provide strategies to build global competence in educational settings that may not be a traditional classroom setting. From how to introduce global goals to how to apply culture and sustainability UN goals in counseling, each educator shares a unique perspective on how to infuse global learning in multiple spaces.
