“Global education develops a greater awareness of the world. It allows young people to see the links between different subject areas and the application of knowledge in a real-world context.”
Matt Brown, GLP 2017
Returned from Uganda and Rwanda?
Initially everyone will be looking forward to hearing about your trip, especially your pupils. Think about what you’ve learned on placement, what did you notice was different and what was the same? What kind of things surprised you that you would also like your students to learn about? Think about where you can fit your experience in to your subject/class age and the curriculum.
Longer-term, you will want to weave Global Education and LfS into your practice in a sustained way; these are ideal platforms for interdisciplinary work and a great way to get your colleagues engaged. Our alumni network and your colleagues at the Development Education Centres are very happy to share examples of best practice and signpost you towards resources.
Throughout your association with GLP you will receive of reading recommendations and links to a range of resources.
GLP Alumni: “It comes very naturally as your students and staff will be very inquisitive. The best way to share and raise awareness is through assemblies or lunches. You will come back very inspired and it will be easy to slot your Rwandan experience in to your lessons and it doesn’t need to be straight away. Take some time and identify where it is going to be most beneficial for both you and your students.”
We will support you in developing a reflective summary which will form the bedrock of achieving the GTCS-accreditation in Global Learning within Learning for Sustainability.
GLP Alumni: “Come back and share your experience in a way that will have a positive impact on student and share the message of Global Citizenship and Learning for Sustainability. The paperwork is then very straight forward and exceptionally easy to write up.”
You could be experiencing reverse cultural shock. You’ve been preparing for your in-country visit, you’ve experienced a different culture, become accustomed to that culture, and now it’s time to go home. You return home and have feelings of ‘do I want to be here? Is this home?’. You notice things you’ve never noticed before, you may look at how wasteful you are back home compared to overseas, you may look differently at your attitude to food, or friends or family. You may want to tell everyone about your trip but find people aren’t as enthused about it as you are, and they’ll never quite understand what you’ve been up to. This article is quite good at explaining it.
Yes, but not through the same process. Each year we have opportunities for one or two alumni to become Team Leads. As a Team Lead you are responsible for supporting the development and delivery of pre-departure training and liaising with in-country partners to create induction, mid-phase review and additional professional learning opportunities. This is a leadership role and only for our most collaborative GLP alumni. If you wish to be considered for the role of Team Lead you must inform your GLP representative.
Absolutely, we like to collect photographs from each of the trips so we can use them in our future marketing materials, newspaper articles, website, social media and so on. A picture tells a thousand words and we want to use your journey to inspire others. We also want to see examples of how your experience has influenced your practice at home so please share pictures of class and school projects through email or social media.
Of course, we strongly encourage this as it is great way to let your community know what you’ve been up to during the summer and to inform them of the impact it’s going to have in the local school. We ask that you liaise with our Communications Manager for messaging around GLP and The Wood Foundation. We may also ask you to feature in publicity case studies.
Yes. Yes. Yes. GLP alumni are absolutely our best representatives. We want you to help us identify others who would benefit from this experience and be of support to our Ugandan and Rwandan partners.
GLP relies on the goodwill and expertise of our GLP alumni. If you decide to support GLP through mentoring or the development and delivery of professional learning at pre-departure and debrief, you will continue to develop your own skills, add experience and credibility to the programme and, enthuse and inspire the next cohort.