Gator Global Educators (GaGE)

Vital Stats

Tyler B

Gainesville, FL

  • people helped53
  • People Doing It32

The Problem

A general lack of cultural exchange, and opportunities to develop global awareness, among American youth and international youth within the American educational system.

Plan of Action

In order to achieve our goal, we have partnered the University of Florida International Center to select and work with students who will create educational lesson plans to be delivered at a local middle school. We will travel to the site twice monthly to the deliver the lesson plan - interactive and innovative - and we'll close our experience by debriefing with the middle school students and with the international students who teach. In order to plan these bi-monthly classes, we will meet as a cohort on off-weeks and we will also meet regularly with our UF sponsors and the middle school teacher we've partnered with.

Project Updates

This week’s lesson revolved around world religions and it was the first week we reached into our bag of friends to help us out. Two of the club’s directors gave presentations – one on Judaism and one on Christianity – and we reached out to our friend Abidah Ali to speak to the middle schoolers about Islam.
The class was very attentive, though probably bored at times since we did a lot more talking and lost less interaction and introspection than last week. In any case, they were enthusiastic when we asked for questions and very interested in trying new things.

Our lesson focused on the three Abrahamic traditions because next time we will focus on eastern religions. We talked about the religions’ common heritage as well as their divisions. We walked carefully, of course, because we were teaching about religion in a public school classroom, and we didn’t want to put the students in an uncomfortable position (or hear about our lesson later from irate parents). We think we did well, in that respect, because we left the classroom without stirring up too much controversy and each student seemed either interested or bored, but not irked or uncomfortable.

Today, Sept. 26, 2011, was our first trip to the middle school class room that we'll be spending the rest of the semester working with. After a false-start last week (a miscommunication led us to almost go in without the teacher even knowing it) our first executed lesson plan this week went extremely well.

We ran a mostly introductory program that incorporated a beach-ball/question ice-breaker, personalizing passport folders that we have created to track our travels throughout the semester and ran a program during which the students selected beads for a bracelet that represents parts of their identities.

We were early to the class room and we had all the materials we needed. We were prepared and ready, and we are looking to improve our experience next time by allowing each other to "be up front" more exclusively next time. For example, instead of all four of us standing in front of the class room at once, only one will stand and the other three will be sitting, focused on the person who is talking.

The next lesson will address world religions and will be our first session utilizing an international student, which is our ultimate goal.