Annie Wendel, as part of the K-12 global learning series

Educators looking to expand student global understanding may also benefit from face-to-face professional development workshops and immersion trips abroad. The programs below offer customizable trainings and short-term international study tours to give educators first-hand experience that can be transferred to classroom learning.

Fulbright-Hays Seminars

The Fulbright-Hays Seminars program provides short-term study and travel seminars abroad for U.S. educators in the social sciences and humanities for the purpose of improving their understanding and knowledge of the peoples and cultures of other countries.

Global Competence Aptitude Assessment (GCAA)

The GCAA-Student is specially designed for high school through graduate level students and used to determine the growth or maturation of a course, curriculum, program or experience. The GCAA-Pro is used to assess working professionals in various sectors, including education. The GCAA can be used in conjunction with training and coaching for schools and districts.

Global Exploration for Educators Organization

GEEO is a non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging and assisting teachers to travel abroad with the aim to share their experiences with students upon their return to the classroom. Thirty program options are available with different locations, dates, and prices. Educators have the option to earn graduate school credit and professional development credit while seeing the world. The trips are 8–24 days in length and are designed and discounted to be interesting and affordable for teachers. GEEO provides teachers with educational materials and the structure to help them bring their experiences into the classroom.

Global Leadership Excellence, LLC

Global Leadership Excellence, LLC offers customizable professional development trainings to implement a global competency model based on GCAA results (webinar option is also available). Fees start at $1,500/day with no limit of participants and opportunity to tailor training based on needs of the school.

Nobis Project

The Nobis Project is a non-profit organization that supports youth, educational, and community leaders in building skills to analyze issues that impact our society and take actions towards initiating positive change. It provides customizable workshops and consulting services for individual educators or a school’s working group. Nobis World also offers domestic and international travel/service learning trips for professional development. The goal of the Nobis World program is to expand teachers’ knowledge and experiences and, in turn, enrich their students’ learning and global awareness.

Primary Source

Primary Source collaborates with teachers, schools, and educational organizations to offer professional development courses and resources that help make global education an integral part of every student’s classroom experience. It offers face-to-face and online programs, curriculum resources, and international study tours to enhance global understanding and help thousands of teachers every year bring the wider world to their students.

Toyota International Teacher Program

The Toyota International Teacher Program is an international professional-development opportunity for U.S. secondary school teachers focusing on environmental stewardship and global connectedness. Selected teachers travel on a short-term (2-3 week) study tour to a country that is at the forefront of innovative solutions to environmental challenges. The teachers explore environmental issues through hands-on activities and incorporate what they learn into interdisciplinary and solution-focused lesson plans to share with their students and communities in the U.S. The program is funded and an application process is required.

Series author Annie Wendel was recently accepted as a fellowship graduate student at Merrimack University to pursue an M.Ed. in Community Engagement. Due to a long-standing passion for global citizenship and social justice, coupled with critical questioning and hard-nosed analysis, Annie has long been a friend of globalsl.org, repeatedly interning for the network and moving our work forward. She is currently completing programming with the Wyman Teen Outreach Program in middle and high schools in the Greater New Haven area in Connecticut, implementing a positive youth development curriculum and organizing community service-learning opportunities for students. She has also learned and served elsewhere in the States, Nepal, South Africa, and the Solomon Islands. After graduate school, she hopes to continue to pursue global education through experiential models and service-learning programs.