World Leadership School

During the pandemic, BB&N’s 4th-grade team was seeking innovative ways to improve a unit around sustainability and deepen student learning around the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In year one, we launched the student experience with a virtual Lower School SPARK Journey, a playful version of the WLS Youth Purpose Summit that creates spaces for children to explore and articulate their unique and natural gifts. Armed with a “SPARK Statement”, students then engaged via Zoom with a number of leaders from WLS partner organizations around the world. These purpose-driven individuals shared their own SPARK with the students, and how that SPARK allowed them to create innovative solutions to sustainability-related challenges in their local community. Virtual access to a sustainable farm in Costa Rica, a solar field in Morocco, and a barrier island in Belize, among others, globalized learning in a time when physical travel was unsafe due to COVID.At the end of the year, we introduced students to Design Thinking and launched them into a guided, virtual Design Sprint. The goal of the sprint was to create a solution to a sustainability challenge in their local community, or one of the communities with whom we had met virtually during the school year. The solutions, founded in factual scientific knowledge, were wildly creative and boundlessly optimistic.

In subsequent years, the experience launched with an in-person SPARK journey in the fall, a series of virtual engagements throughout the school year, and an in-person design sprint in the spring. This combination of in-person and virtual programming woven throughout the school year is a best-practice approach to globalizing curriculum in a cost-effective manner.

“I really enjoyed the part of the immersion where we created our prototypes because I got to work with my friends and made something that I was proud of.”
— BB&N 4th Grade Student

Selwyn House, a K-11 boys’ school, came to WLS seeking greater consistency and a student-centered shift with their long-standing Middle School Intensives program. The ten Intensives, offered to Selwyn’s 7th and 8th grade boys each spring, had become passion projects for teachers but lacked impact and cohesion. While they covered a variety of topics from cycling and children’s literature to pickling and painting, the student experience lacked cohesion, equity, and impact.

WLS first facilitated two Project-Based Learning workshops, which focused on reimaging the Intensives through PBL. With time for teachers to brainstorm and work on their Intensives design, teachers began to make progress towards a common goal.

As teachers began the following school year, WLS coaches met with each Intensives team through our WLS Coaching Institute. These meetings were built into the school day and allowed teachers to make progress, ask questions, and explore ways to bring student-centered learning into their daily practice.

Student reflection and experiential learning were areas that were identified as needing support. As teachers put the final touches on their Intensive, WLS ran another workshop focused on reflective practices. Through exploration and experimentation, teachers built their own reflection “toolkit” for the Intensives week.

Following the Intensives week, WLS coaches met with each teacher to reflect on their experience, discuss student outcomes, and begin to think about next year. Closing the professional learning loop in this way was arguably the most impactful piece of the puzzle. Celebrating progress, acknowledging vulnerabilities, and identifying student outcomes helped teachers reflect back and plan forward.

“This course was very helpful. It was tailored to fit what we do at Selwyn House and was a great mix of being presented with information and then being given time to do some hands-on work. I walked away feeling excited and motivated to build my Intensives course for next year.”
— Faculty, Selwyn House

After a merger of two schools and the launch of a new mission, Steamboat Mountain School seized the moment to galvanize faculty around whole-school, teacher-driven professional learning.

To begin this year-long engagement, WLS facilitators ran a 2-day Purpose Launch workshop on Steamboat’s campus. During this workshop, faculty explored their individual purpose and came together around the new mission of the unified school. They formed collaborative teams centered around the school’s Design Principles, and began the exciting process of dreaming big about what was possible for new programs, equity, pedagogy, sustainability, and more.

The momentum of this year-long, holistic professional learning program ramped up during the school year. Design Teams (similar to Professional Learning Communities) met monthly in order to advance along WLS’ Coaching Continuum. First team members worked to build trust and then moved toward action.

As small teams met throughout the year, the entire faculty also came together for a number of half-day workshops led by WLS facilitators. These workshops continued to build on the Purpose Learning foundationfrom our 2-day launch by highlighting the ties to DEI andbelonging, training faculty to use the WLS Purpose Planner, and breathing new life into the existing curriculum.

In a final culmination of the year’s programming, WLS facilitated an EdCamp, led by the Design Teams, in which each team had the opportunity to showcase their learning and their concrete commitments to move the school forward into the future.

“I’ve attended many forgettable teacher training sessions — this, on the other hand, was powerful on both personal and professional levels.”
— Faculty, Steamboat Mountain School

A team of Middle School faculty from Landon, a 3-12 boys’ school, engaged WLS to help implement a “moonshot” project the team had developed at our K-12 Purpose Summit.

Their big idea was to build Purpose Learning into an existing curriculum in 8th grade English and a newly developed curriculum in 8th grade history. They also wanted to build a WLS Youth Purpose Summit into part of the brainstorming process their students do prior to writing their “This I Believe” speech in English class. The thinking was that each student’s purpose work would also connect to their culminating experience in the U.S. History & Civics class around examining a social issue in their local community.

WLS supported this multifaceted idea with a multi-layered approach. In support of the curriculum piece, WLS coached the teachers to examine existing practices in both the English and History courses. We supported the educators as they learned to utilize our Purpose Learning tools to redesign curriculum.

In addition, WLS visited Landon to facilitate the Middle School SPARK Journey, an energetic, middle school-appropriate version of our Youth Purpose Summit. While moving through the SPARK day, students identified their SPARK, articulated the impact they have on their own community, and began to clarify what their “This I Believe speech…” might include.

The original moonshot idea was the foundation for the exciting progress Landon is making in their middle school – bravo!

“The best part of the SPARK Journey was seeing what gifts people choose for themselves. It was interesting because I thought they were very accurate.”
— Landon School, 8th Grade Student

“I feel the activity where we took off our shoes and talked was the best. It was extremely great and I learned a lot about my peers.”
— Landon School 8th Grade Student

Like many of our school partners seeking to implement change, Dawson School took a multi-faceted and targeted approach to professional learning in order to implement a new “X Block” into the 7th and 8th-grade schedules. As an alum of our K-12 Purpose Summit, Middle School Director Jay Parker began with a foundational PBL workshop for his faculty. During the workshop, educators were exposed to the elements of PBL and had the opportunity to develop a classroom unit/project of their own.

In the school year that followed the initial workshop, WLS team members offered a variety of additional professional learning opportunities for faculty. These included a Design Sprint, a Design with Purpose Workshop, and virtual coaching through our WLS Coaching Institute. Each of these workshops helped “level up” the learning and create spaces for faculty to collaborate around curriculum. As a result of the Design with Purpose Workshop, both the 7th and 8th grade teams came away with solid foundational plans for their X Block. Intended to expose 7th graders to the clean water crisis, and 8th graders to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the X Block experiences were brand-new for the teachers and students! During the implementation and execution of the new programming, WLS supported faculty with virtual coaching.

At mid-year, the 7th grade, semester-long program launched with this faculty-created HOOK and led students to create innovative solutions to the clean water issues.

WLS staff traveled to Greece in July 2022 with a teacher team from The Chapin School, in order to design a new elective course and travel experiences in partnership with the American Community Schools Athens. During our time in Greece, we met with the International Rescue Committee, SolidarityNow, and the Social Action and Innovation Centre. We also had a chance to learn about the inspiring work of local grassroots organizations like Melissa Network & The HOME Project as we envisioned how students could contribute to their work through learnerships. During the 2022-23 WLS and Chapin kicked off a full year of coaching and design work to support the implementation of the classroom and travel components.

In addition to supporting the development of a Greece course and travel program, WLS has worked with faculty from Chapin to support and expand an existing partnership with SHOFCO in the Kibera neighborhood of Nairobi, Kenya. This partnership is expanding from an educator-to-educator partnership to also including a student travel component. In the summer of 2023, educators and students from Chapin will travel to Kenya to work alongside and learn from the inspiring educators and students at the SHOFCO schools.

The Berkeley Carroll School began partnering with World Leadership School on their Global Education Program in 2009 to develop intentional and sustainable Student Travel Programs. BCS started with two School-to-School Partnerships in Kenya and Costa Rica. Their Student Travel Programs have continued to grow and evolve throughout WLS’ partnership with BCS, and now the upper school has two School-to-School Partnerships in India and Tanzania, and the middle school has a School-to-School Partnership in Costa Rica. The program in India runs during the school’s innovative Spring Intensives period, which allows faculty to make clear curricular connections and build skill sets before traveling.

In the fall of 2010, BCS began participating in Educator Development with WLS as well, beginning with an after-school In-Service Workshop on global learning strategies for the high school faculty. In that first year, several upper school teachers received direct coaching through the Virtual Coaching Institute, as did one emerging student leader with an interest in former child soldiers. Since the fall of 2011, several teachers in BCS’s elementary and middle school have also participated in the VCI, resulting in exemplary global projects in the arts, sciences, and mathematics. Middle school VCIs have focused predominantly on project-based learning, and the BCS middle school has seen significant growth in teachers’ student-centered approaches.

In the summer of 2015, five teachers from the Berkeley Carroll Elementary School traveled to Costa Rica on a WLS Educator Travel Program, which allowed them to develop individual projects and begin to envision a global learning program across the lower school. Those same teachers participated in a “VCI Light” after their travel, to help them turn their ideas into action.

BCS continued to support teachers through the VCI program after the initial year in 2015 by running three Virtual Coaching Institutes across content areas in the Middle School each year. In 2018, the MS Science team designed a genetics PBL with their coach. The driving question that the students researched was, “How can we use the science of genetics to take action to protect diversity?” BCS kicked off this PBL with a field trip to a Genetics Laboratory in Long Island. The students split into groups based on interest and shared their learning through multiple platforms such as podcasts, Op-Ed articles, board games, comics, panel discussions, PSAs, educating others, etc.

“In our nearly decade-long relationship with the World Leadership School, Berkeley Carroll has developed quality travel programs that have deepened and improved our curriculum. Teachers and students come back from WLS experiences ready to build on what they have learned. Our collaborative relationship with WLS has resulted in us adding courses, engaging in professional development with WLS, and setting new goals for Project Based Learning, led by their trainers. All of these activities have made us a better school and have increased interest in our school.”

— Bob Vitalo, Former Head of School, Berkeley Carroll School

Mount Vernon Presbyterian School began its Educator Development partnership with World Leadership School in the spring of 2015 with an In-Service Workshop on project-based learning for the Upper School faculty and a group of teachers in the Lower School. Two teacher teams from the Upper and Lower Schools received ongoing Virtual Teacher Institute support that first year, and since then, all Lower and Middle School faculty have participated in additional In-Service Workshops. MVPS is making use of a creative combination of on-site visits for full-faculty workshops and individualized coaching as well as the VCI to support new project development and implementation throughout the school year. In 2016-17, VCI candidates include the 3rd grade team and two teacher leaders in the middle school who will be supporting project-based learning in their division. Additionally, MVPS has partnered with WLS for Risk Management Workshops with administrators and trip leaders. In 2016, MVPS launched its first School-to-School Partnership Student Travel Program to Costa Rica with WLS as part of its Interim Term. This program allows faculty traveling with students to have hands-on experience connecting the learning inside the schoolhouse to an out-of-the-classroom experience.
MVPS has continued its relationship with WLS by supporting educators through the Virtual Coaching Institute in every division each year. In 2018, MVPS added a new model for the VCI called VCI 2.0. This VCI model allows any teacher who has graduated from the VCI to access a coach at any point throughout the year to get support in the design, implementation, or reflection of a project. This continual support allows educators to continue their work with a WLS coach exactly where they need it in their teaching.

“At Mount Vernon Presbyterian School and the Mount Vernon Institute for Innovation, we believe deeply in transformational learning and empowering learners to address issues in our community – both locally and globally. In 2015, we began our partnership with World Leadership School, and we are blessed to be in collaboration with WLS. To date, we have engaged with WLS in the areas of Project-Based Learning, risk management, and a Collaborative Leadership Program to Costa Rica. Not only does WLS possess strong experience and knowledge about deeper learning and equipping people to be positive change agents, but the people at WLS are simply wonderful individuals and teammates. We are able to do higher-level work and offer more vigorous leadership because of the support and partnership we enjoy from WLS.”

— Bo Adams, Chief Learning and Innovation Officer, Mount Vernon Presbyterian School

St. Mary’s Academy began partnering with World Leadership School on a School-to-School Partnership program in 2011 with a middle school program in Peru. The program has grown to be a signature seventh and eighth grade experience for students at St. Mary’s Academy. The student experience in Peru inspired a World Issues eighth-grade course that connects the learning outside the classroom with learning inside the classroom, and sparked a robust school-wide emphasis on the expansion of a global perspective. St. Mary’s Academy also partners with WLS annually to collaborate with the Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico. This full class, eighth grade partnership continues to grow and deepen with a strong commitment from faculty at St. Mary’s Academy and Cochiti Elementary School and each visiting the other’s school.

WLS began working in-house with educators at St. Mary’s Academy during the 2018-2019 school year. SMA has set forth ambitious and exciting goals for their school community and WLS is committed to helping SMA achieve those goals through our Pathways To Purpose integration plan. This partnership began with a full-faculty Purpose Clarification workshop with Ross Wehner and transitioned into three Virtual Coaching Institute teams across all divisions. Throughout the remainder of the year, we gathered together as a full community during three webinars to keep the faculty supported and engaged as they continued their personal and professional purpose work. In the fall of 2019, WLS returned to SMA for the second in-service workshop focused on purpose in the classroom, looking at specific and intentional ways for educators to use their curriculum and content as a lens to explore student purpose.

“We as educators have a responsibility to achieve the impossible . . . We have a responsibility to prepare our students to engage the future with informed empathy, a collaborative spirit, and a commitment to justice and respect for the earth and all that it holds. The Cochiti experience took students outside of the building’s walls, provided ample opportunities for critical skills to be developed, and allowed them to walk a little bit in the shoes of the Cochiti. Let’s do more of that.”

— Martha Ashley, MS Principal, St. Mary’s Academy

Parish Episcopal School began to partner with WLS for Educator Development in the fall of 2014, when their Assistant Head began his first Virtual Coaching Institute experience. As the teacher responsible for introducing 9th graders to Parish’s Academy of Global Studies through his 9th grade Global Studies course, Andrew spent the next two years revising and re-envisioning his course through the lens of student-centered learning, weaving in new opportunities for students to engage with people doing the work they were studying in class. In 2015-16, an additional VCI with Middle Eastern Teacher Coach Barbara Petzen focused on offering a more nuanced look at Middle Eastern politics and cultures in 9th grade core Social Studies.

ParishAbroad is a global education program that seeks to raise the global competency of Parish students through purposeful and meaningful travel. In the spring of 2015, as part of the ParishAbroad program, students started a School-to-School Partnership in Chinchoti, India, and in 2016, students started an NGO Partnership in Ollantaytambo, Peru. In 2017, the middle school students began a School-to-School Partnership in San Ignacio, Belize.

“Our partnership with World Leadership School has been invaluable to the growth of ParishAbroad. We are now entering the third year of our partnership and our students have established meaningful relationships with communities in India and Peru, and we will soon be adding a community in Belize to our Global Programming. The expertise that WLS provides spans all aspects needed to provide students and parents with robust global travel opportunities. Program logistics, risk management, marketing, and program curriculum are all areas where they have helped our program grow and evolve. What I appreciate most about working with WLS is their purpose-driven ethos and positive energy to truly make a difference. They are a true partner in both purpose and mission.”

— Rick Dunn, Director of Parish Abroad, Parish Episcopal School

Holton-Arms School began working with World Leadership School on student travel programs in 2008 with a program to Costa Rica. Holton-Arms continues to work with WLS as they develop new partnership locations for their signature Junior Journey. In addition to Costa Rica, Holton-Arms and WLS have partnered for programs in Rwanda and Peru. Junior Journeys allow 11th grade girls to get off campus and explore issues related to the environment, poverty, women’s equality, universal education, and the Sustainable Development Goals. WLS and Holton-Arms also work in collaboration with Landon School to provide a co-ed Student Travel Program to Belize for middle school students. Most recently, WLS and Holton-Arms have partnered for a Global Gathering, a unique conference for teachers and administrators to learn, network, and share approaches to teaching global competencies and connecting classrooms to the world.

“Holton-Arms is thrilled to enter into our sixth year of partnership with the World Leadership School. Global Education is an integral part of our mission to cultivate the unique potential of young women through the “education not only of the mind, but of the soul and spirit.” As such, our collaboration with WLS, based on mutual respect and a shared philosophy of the importance of global competence, has engendered programs in Costa Rica, Rwanda, and Belize that both enrich and extend student learning beyond the classroom. WLS shares Holton’s vision of education as a means of empowering students to not only make sense of the world’s interconnectedness, but more importantly to take appropriate action for the promotion of sustainability, social justice, equality, and peace. With these values deeply embedded in the WLS curriculum, the entire team at WLS is committed to understanding the mission/philosophy of their partner schools as they strive to realize rich global programs and services unique to each institution’s needs.”

— Melissa Brown, Director of Global Education, Holton-Arms School

Town School for Boys started partnering with World Leadership School in 2012 for Educator Development support around global- and project-based learning. Since then, WLS visits campus one to two times per year to offer In-Service Workshops and On-Site Coaching to individuals and teams focused on a creative combination of global integration and project-based learning. Additionally, World Leadership School provides Virtual Coaching Institute support to all teachers who travel with WLS each summer, a strategy started in the Town/WLS partnership that is now used by several schools. To date, Town School for Boys has sent teachers on Educator Travel Programs in Peru, Costa Rica, and Belize, and teachers follow those experiences with a year of deep VCI support to turn their ideas into projects for their students. Town School for Boys began their first student program in Costa Rica with WLS in the spring of 2016, and it was an impactful and successful experience.

In 2018, Town made a deeper commitment to supporting teachers by dovetailing the Virtual Coaching Institute with the Peru Educator Development program. The two Lower School traveling educators worked with a WLS coach through the school year following the Peru experience to help the teachers continue to focus on and work towards their goals of globalizing their curriculum. The coach helped them maintain relationships with Peruvian educators, brainstorming ways to bring the world into the classroom through Mystery Skype, and formalize a pen pal relationship with a primary school in Kenya.

“Our partnership with WLS has strengthened the ties of global competency in our curriculum and allowed us to grow towards our global mission statement together.”

— Flora Mugambi-Mutunga, Director of Community Building and Inclusion and Kristen Goggin, Math Teacher, Town School for Boys

In the spring of 2018, Oakwood and WLS began a partnership to incorporate educator development work through the Virtual Coaching Institute. Two faculty from Oakwood participated in the VCI focused on the Program-To-Classroom Integration Model. The goal of the program and, in turn, the coaching relationship, was to create an experience for students focused on immersion into the culture, provide an environmental tie-in to classroom learning and global impact, and explore the use of the Spanish language in-country vs. classroom. The chosen location was the Dominican Republic. The driving question for this immersion experience was, “How might we, as environmental activists, create urgency about the state of our oceans? The students spent three days prior to departure learning about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) put forth by the United Nations. Each group selected the SDG they would research while in-country and set forth developing a plan to gather data while in the Dominican Republic. The students developed their own specific sub-question that supported the collective driving question and set off to answer that question. The final night in the Dominican Republic, the students presented their findings in a TEDTalk-style presentation for the community.

Saint Stephen’s Episcopal School began to partner with World Leadership School in the fall of 2018 with the Virtual Coaching Institute. The third grade team was going through a restructuring, away from English and Social Studies and moved toward a Humanities collaboration. The focus of this VCI was on strategic ways to bring the world into the classroom and allow the students to use the content as a lens for global learning. The team spent the year revising and re-envisioning their courses through the lens of student-centered learning with a global focus.

The Dalton School began its relationship with World Leadership School in the fall of 2018. This relationship began with an In-Service Workshop on project-based learning for the teachers in the Lower School. Following the workshop, Dalton engaged in three team Virtual Coaching Institutes across the Lower School division. Each VCI was focused deeply on the intricacies of project-based learning and a student-centered approach in the Lower School.

Riverside Presbyterian Day School began a partnership with World Leadership School in the fall of 2018 with the Virtual Coaching Institute. RPDS engaged in an individual 6th grade VCI focused on project-based learning and the globalization of the curriculum. Anthony Franklin reported that he “had been feeling a little stale so this was a good opportunity for me to stretch and grow”.

World Leadership School and George Walton Academy began this partnership in the fall of 2018. GWA had recently had an administrative transition and the new Head of School decided to make global learning a priority at GWA. GWA began this relationship with WLS by engaging in two Virtual Coaching Institutes focused on 4th grade and 5th grade. The primary focus of this work was on globalizing the curriculum and creating opportunities for students to explore responsible global citizenship.

Appleby College began its Educator Development partnership with WLS with a global education In-Service Workshop and On-Site Coaching in the fall of 2011. Since that first year, Appleby has invited WLS back to campus at least once every school year for continued work with veteran faculty and the on-boarding of new faculty. In addition to on-site workshops on global integration and inclusivity and personalized coaching with individual teachers and project teams, Appleby has involved multiple faculty and administrators in the Virtual Coaching Institute each year, so that any faculty wanting more individualized support can find help throughout the school year. WLS has also supported department chairs as they encourage global integrations across their disciplines, and is centrally involved in building the global capacities of new faculty each year through a series of webinars and on-demand VCI support.

Appleby continues to support its new and second-year teachers through the Virtual Coaching Institute, monthly webinars, and on-site professional development visits. Each year, the cohort of new teachers meets with a WLS coach in person in October and then again in January. These on-site dates involved a one-on-one meeting with each teacher to dive into their individual goals and project work in the classroom. From those meetings, the coach and teacher set a plan for the year for implementation. New teachers also meet with a WLS coach every six weeks via Skype to discuss topics of interest like PBL logistics and management, design of effective assessments in PBL, and creating a meaningful deliverable. The year is rounded out with a Celebration of Learning where each teacher shares their PBL implementation and talks honestly about successes and growth areas moving forward.

“Appleby College has been enriched through its work with World Leadership School over the past five years. With the goal of globalizing our whole school curricula, we have engaged WLS in a number of capacities. These have included faculty professional development trips to Costa Rica, Peru, Tanzania, and Cuba; whole faculty professional development on globalizing curriculum and examining more student-centered pedagogy; one-to-one coaching for individual teachers; making connections with classrooms at like-minded schools across the globe; and making connections with guest speakers around the world to enhance teacher and student perspectives. We continue to work with World Leadership School to meet our evolving needs to make global education an integral component of all of our students’ experiences.”

— Rob McGuiness, Assistant Head of School, Global Education, Appleby College

Vail Mountain School began to partner with World Leadership School for Educator Development and Student Travel in the fall of 2018. VMS implemented a new class for 7th and 8th graders that was focused on project-based learning and completely student-centered. The lead teacher of this program participated in an individual Virtual Coaching Institute to help clarify and stay focused on the scope and sequence of this year-long class. The students in this class each were asked to choose their own area of interest throughout the year and develop research around that particular interest area. After reaching out to external experts in the Vail area, the students worked with these mentors to create an action component. One student published an article in the Vail Daily News about her research and findings regarding the US response to the hurricane relief in Puerto Rico. Another student was asked to create an interactive art exhibit in the Vail Valley Art Studio!

In the spring of 2019, the VMS faculty embarked on a student travel program to Peru. This program has an NGO focus and allows students to learn from local leaders on the ground about the work being done to address the lack of rural health education and women empowerment programs through a weaving cooperative.