On March 25th, nine U.S. high school teachers began a journey to build bridges with around 70 educators across the Middle East and North Africa through engaging their students in online, project based-learning. These teachers are participating in an online course to build relationships and co-plan project activities with teachers from other countries as part of the Christopher Stevens Youth Network (CSYN) program. In the first week of the online course, educators introduced themselves and learned about other teachers from around the world. They not only shared about their names, hometowns, hobbies, and interests, but also began to dialogue about their hopes and dreams for their students and why global collaboration is important.

As one teacher in the U.S. shared,

 “Global collaboration, aside from the obvious importance of globalizing our students, is important because it sets the tone that will carry our students into successful careers which will incorporate all the components of our global society.  Our students need to learn the tolerance that is essential in our current world and they need to understand that they are not the center of whichever universe they are currently focused on. In addition to that, learning about and with people from other places is just exciting and fun!”

Teachers will continue to connect and exchange through the online course this spring and will work together to plan a collaborative project for their students. We welcome the new iEARN teachers and are excited to learn about their future projects that will connect youth in the U.S. with their peers in the Middle East and North Africa.