Global Competency Toolkit
For the Fulbright course, I built two artifacts that may be of interest to those who want to advance global competency in their classrooms:
“Civil Disobedience” and Global Movements for Justice
Inter-School Activity
During our course, another social studies teacher and I designed an inter-school activity bringing together my 11th-grade AP U.S. History class in Louisiana and his 9th-grade AP World History class in New York. Guided by Harvard Project Zero’s Projections Across Time thinking routine, our students analyzed an excerpt from W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk to explore how literature and personal narrative illuminate the lived experiences of marginalized populations across time and space. Using a shared Google Doc, students responded to the text through their own regional and cultural contexts before reading and engaging with the reflections from the other school. This cross-regional setup allowed us to examine Du Bois’ concept of “double consciousness” not just as a historical U.S. concept, but as a global framework for understanding how marginalized groups navigate competing identities within oppressive systems.
The exercise went exceptionally well as it generated remarkably candid and thoughtful student dialogue across geographic barriers. My students in the South connected Du Bois’ “veil” to modern disparities they observe locally, while the other teacher’s students in the North – many from immigrant backgrounds – applied the same concept to their own struggles with dual cultural identities and systemic barriers like the “bamboo ceiling.” The text proved accessible across grade levels, state lines, cultures, and demographics, and seeing how students from a completely different region interpreted the same material deepened everyone’s perspective far beyond what a standard textbook can offer. It also pushed us as teachers to bridge U.S. and World History more intentionally, while reinforcing how vital global education is for our classrooms.
Want to see how we planned this lesson? Check out our planning doc here.
Digital Teaching Tools
The right digital infrastructure transforms global education from passive reading into active, authentic exchange. Here are 5 digital tools or platforms that I personally recommend.
The Center for Media Literacy is a pioneering educational organization that provides leadership, professional development and evidence-based educational resources. Using a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with media content, CML works to help citizens develop critical thinking and media production skills needed to participate fully in the 21st century media culture.
Best for foundational media frameworks. CML’s “Questions for Deconstruction” offer a clear, structured template teachers can directly adapt for primary source analysis and critical news literacy units.
Media Education Lab is an online community that advances the field of digital and media literacy education through leadership development, scholarship, and community engagement.
Best for research-backed professional development. Provides educators with free curriculum modules, research publications, and interactive multimedia tools to integrate digital literacy across diverse humanities disciplines.
Empatico is a free digital platform that empowers students and educators to connect their classrooms with others around the world. The non-profit organization gives kids the opportunity to learn about different perspectives and practice interpersonal skills that are crucial for building cross-cultural relationships later in life. Empatico guides partner classrooms through activities that touch on perspective taking, critical thinking, cooperation and respectful communication.
Best for synchronous cross-cultural student exchanges. Excellent for organizing structured, real-time video dialogues and shared project prompts between geographically distant classrooms.
The European School Education Platform is a meeting point for the school education community – school staff, researchers, and policymakers – to share news, interviews, publications, practice examples, courses and partners for their Erasmus+ projects. Its eTwinning area is dedicated to eTwinners and their activities.
Best for global teacher networking and collaborative projects. A primary hub for discovering international educator partnerships, exploring open-access professional courses, and observing European model practices in cross-border education.
NAMLE: The National Association for Media Literacy Education unites a community of educators committed to advancing media literacy education.
Best for advocacy resources and national teacher networks. Offers access to Media Literacy Week toolkits, policy guides, and an active national network for educators advocating for critical digital literacy in secondary and higher education.
Local Community Resources
Philippine-Louisiana Historical Society: makes the stories and artifacts of Filipino Louisiana publicly available.
The Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC): The HNOC documents how Louisiana served as a critical nexus in the broader Atlantic economy, connecting West Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the U.S. South through trade, migration, and resistance.
The World Affairs Council of New Orleans (WACNO): hosts international visiting delegations, diplomats, and policy experts to build civic awareness around foreign policy and cross-cultural understanding.
