Category: Blog

World Savvy is thrilled to welcome the latest addition to our team: Joy DeMarais-Lanz, our new Chief Operating Officer (COO)!  In the midst of World Savvy’s ambitious goals for growing our reach and impact across the country, the COO is responsible for supporting the internal scaling of the organization, leading the executive management team, and developing a performance culture throughout the organization. 

Prior to joining World Savvy, Joy served as an Executive Director at Synergos, an Association Management Company where she led a portfolio of 13 association and not-for-profit clients. Before her tenure at Synergos, Joy held leadership positions at HOBY (Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership), the National Youth Leadership Council, and three higher education institutions. Praised for her commitment to mentorship, Joy invests her time and energy in nurturing talent, providing guidance, and empowering others. 

We recently got to sit down with Joy and hear more about her story. Follow along with us to learn more about her, her journey to World Savvy, and her connection to our mission to educate and engage youth to learn, work, and thrive as responsible global citizens.

What was your journey with school/education like, and how has it led you to the desire to reimagine education with World Savvy?

In school, I was a bit of an overachiever and very involved—especially because I had educators willing to take some risks and engage me in unique ways. This is how I first began to engage in reimagining what education could be. I attended a school that was initially fairly traditional; however, during my junior and senior years, the school started a “school within a school” model. It was all thematic units and experiential education, combining math, science, social studies, and English, and it was team-taught. I absolutely loved it. This model was funded by the Blandin Foundation, from the Center for School Change. I was so engaged, and even began accompanying the teacher team to workshops at the Center for School Change and talking about young people’s role in school change—how young people needed to have a voice and a seat at the table, something closely aligned with World Savvy’s values and approach. That, combined with being involved in many student organizations, career and technical education, and doing advocacy and training other young people about how to get involved—I was very active even as a student in reimagining what education could be.

After high school, I attended college at St. Catherine University, where I learned the language of social justice and social change, a rich tradition at the school. I also started interning, first at the Center for School Change and then at the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC), learning the language of service learning and experiential education. That led to me writing a federal grant that resulted in a full-time job at NYLC during my senior year of college. I started there as the Director of Youth and Strategic Initiatives while still a student, after which I transitioned into a full-time role. 

If it weren’t for my high school teachers who were willing to take a risk and do some innovative, collaborative teaching and learning, I wouldn’t be in the career that I’m in today. I have immense gratitude for that group of teachers for being risk-takers. Because they were willing to think about teaching and learning differently, it had a direct impact on my life and my career—and my journey to World Savvy.

Could you tell us more about the rest of your career that has led you to this point—to joining the World Savvy team?

At NYLC, I was doing a lot of work training teachers and young people how to work together through youth-adult partnerships and service learning, school change work, and opening space for youth to serve on boards. I then decided that I wanted to be an educator myself. So I left NYLC for graduate school and, afterward, I went into higher education for eleven years, teaching at three different institutions. During that time, I really dug into teaching methodology, and I stayed connected to K-12 education—even though I was in higher education—through some training and consulting, including with the Department of Education. This work led me to Anoka-Ramsey Community College, where I launched the service learning program there. 

After that, in the role I’m transitioning out of at Synergos, I’ve now worked in Association Management for ten years. I wanted to be an Executive Director of a nonprofit, and I saw this role that looked so similar—and in the process learned that there was this whole world of association management that I hadn’t known existed. So for the last ten years, I’ve worked with professional societies and trade associations as their fractional Executive Director, helping them lead the charge around strategic plans, governance, and operationalizing their goals. 

Recently though, I’ve been craving a return to my roots in the school change world and working with young people. Especially now as a mother—my kids are currently in the Anoka-Hennepin school district, which is the largest school district in Minnesota—and helping my middle school student navigate this period of their education, I realized I wanted to be working with change agents who are committed to reimagining education. I want to play some role in that again with World Savvy.

It’s clear that the mission of World Savvy resonates deeply with you. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

The goal of educating for global competence—preparing students with the skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary to thrive in an ever-changing and complex world—and especially through the lens of preparing young for jobs that don’t yet exist, is so important. The ability to learn, and unlearn, and relearn is so critical in our current economy, and our education system is just not set up to do that. It is critical that we, as stakeholders in education, ask questions and push the system to start thinking about the imperative of preparing young people differently.

I’m so excited to join the World Savvy team as the new COO. I’m excited to work with people who I think are smarter than I am—that will make me smarter. Throughout the entire process, I’ve been so impressed by everybody, and so impressed by the mission and the values of the organization—especially the commitment to recognizing that we are all human, that we focus on collaboration, and that not only what we do but how we do it matters. The idea how we communicate with one another, how we make decisions, and how we serve in leadership is just as important as what we achieve, I am very aligned with. I’m excited to be a sponge, to absorb and learn, but also to contribute in this type of professional community that is in some ways modeling what we hope World Savvy’s work in schools will yield for young people.

As a final question, a fun one: tell us a bit about yourself outside of work.

I have a 13-year-old, and then I have a bonus daughter who is 24 and another who is 27, and I am a bonus grandma to my 27-year-old’s 5-year-old. I also have fourteen nieces and nephews! So I spend a lot of time with my family—I just love hanging out with them, especially as my nieces and nephews are getting older and starting their lives. It’s so fun to see where they are going. I also love to travel. My husband for many years had a job with Delta, so we had many adventures flying standby. We love to see new places, see new things, and expose ourselves to new ideas. I’m also a reader, and my guilty pleasure is binge-watching TV—which I used to feel guilty about, but not anymore! I feel I have fairly typical hobbies, but the throughline is that I just love learning about people, love learning about different ideas—whether through travel, relationships, or reading—I just love consistently exposing myself to new things.

Thank you, Joy. We are so thrilled you’ve joined the World Savvy team!

We live in unprecedented times. New challenges, opportunities, and technologies present themselves almost daily. The future of work is a moving target, and changing demographics and global challenges require new skills and dispositions to successfully navigate our communities and workplaces.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman says we are living through a “Promethean moment.” We cannot slow the pace of change, but we can transform our education system to meet this moment and adequately prepare all young people to thrive in their communities, locally and globally.

Here are three important ways to reimagine learning and create a system that helps students know more, care more, and do more.

Elevate skills

If we want young people to be responsible and engaged citizens, we need to teach them the skills and dispositions this requires. We must rethink and reimagine the classroom experience, along with the traditional assessments teachers have used. No longer should we be grading to see if a student knows dates, facts, and definitions—they can find that information on their phones. Instead, we should be grading their ability to think critically and creatively about the information before them, ask deep and probing questions, seek out multiple perspectives, form opinions based on fact and exploration, and find comfort in ambiguity. 

In life, there are no easy answers. Why should school be different? 

It is also time that we shift our language when describing empathy, resilience, and collaboration. These are not “soft skills.” In our complex and interconnected world, they are essential skills, and they should be taught and assessed with intention and urgency.  

Elevate relevance

At a recent event in rural Minnesota, I shared a series of statements with students and asked them to stand if it applied to them. “I use the internet everyday.” Everyone was on their feet. “What I learn in school feels relevant to my life outside of school.” No one moved.

Students can practice critical thinking, research, empathy, and collaboration with any topic, so why not give them topics relevant to their lives right now and that prepare them to engage in a world that is complex, interconnected and rapidly changing? 

This shift requires a reimagining of the role of school. So much of K-12 education is about core requirements and checking boxes. It is based on what adults think kids should know, just in case. But a just-in-case education is not getting it done. We need a just-in-time model that encourages curiosity, perspective taking, and deep thinking. We can give students work that directly connects to the world beyond the classroom so that they can begin to make sense of the present and get prepared for the future. 

Elevate student choice and agency

Many schools offer students choices when it comes to the classes they take. It is good for kids to have options, but none of those choices matter as much as the choices they get to make once they are in the classroom.  

Students need to have a voice in their own learning. Essential skills like critical thinking, coping and resilience, and questioning prevailing assumptions can be demonstrated in a myriad of ways, so let’s give students some power over how they show growth in these areas. When teachers move from the center of the classroom, a place where they are the keepers of knowledge, and into the role of facilitators of their students’ learning, they empower students to fully and authentically engage with the material and learn to think for themselves. There is nothing more powerful than asking a student, “What do you care most about?” and seeing their curiosity ignited. Schools can and should help students identify their passions and prepare them to take informed action on the issues that matter to them.

School should not be a place that kids have to get through in order to do something more exciting; it should not be a box that has to be checked. School should be a place where important and complex work gets done, where students feel seen and valued, and where they learn how to see and value others. By centering the development of the essential skills and dispositions that young people need to thrive in this ever-changing world, schools can create learning spaces that are relevant, inclusive, and engaging—places where students want to be. We can transform classrooms into places that move beyond what kids know and instead focus on what kids can do with what they know. This is what the world needs: a generation of young people who are curious, empathetic, critical thinkers who will take action on issues of global significance. 

The time is now to start reimagining what is possible, so that young people can graduate not only with the skills and dispositions they need, but that the world needs.

— Mallory Tuominen

Mallory Tuominen is the chief program officer at World Savvy. Beginning her career as a classroom teacher, Mallory was quickly exposed to the inequities in public education and worked diligently to create a classroom that was inclusive, relevant and real-world based, while holding all of her students to high standards. A desire to work more closely with educators to develop their cultural competence inspired Mallory to leave the classroom and join the Minnesota Humanities Center. Working closely with community members in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Greater Minnesota, Mallory developed and facilitated humanities-based professional development offerings for educators. 

Prior to joining World Savvy in 2015, Mallory worked as an Assessment Manager in Chicago Public Schools providing leadership around assessment for student learning for the district’s high schools. She also worked as an Instructional Supports Manager for Minneapolis Public Schools, collaborating to support the district’s new and tenured educators through professional development and mentorship. Throughout her 15 year career in education, Mallory’s focus has always remained on high-quality teaching and learning and providing educators with professional learning opportunities to transform practice. 

Mallory holds a BA in History and an MEd in Social Studies Education, both from the University of Minnesota. She also holds an MEd in Education, Culture and Society from DePaul University and a certificate in Instructional Design from the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign. She can be reached at mallory@worldsavvy.org.

Greetings, World Savvy community, 

This coming spring will mark 22 years for me as the CEO of World Savvy, and we continue to reach milestones that I could scarcely have imagined back in 2002. Together we have built an incredible organization: trusted, sustainable, and relied upon across the country to empower educators to make schools inclusive, relevant, and engaging for all students, inspiring young people to learn, work, and thrive as responsible global citizens. One of our core values as an organization is that we “intentionally grow and change”, and so, the news I am sharing today is offered in this spirit and with deep gratitude.

I am proud to share that now is the right time for me to start a thoughtful transition out of the CEO role. One of my deepest desires, always, was to build a leaderful organization that could meaningfully change the K-12 system, beyond my leadership. We’ve arrived in that place in the last year at World Savvy: the most experienced, talented national team we’ve ever assembled, rising demand and new partnerships across dozens of states, a stable and growing network of funding partners, and a proven approach that is now changing the conversation about what constitutes a quality education. Since 2002, we’ve reached more than 904,000 students and 7,300 teachers across 45 US states and 32 countries, and we’re positioned to impact millions more in the decade to come. And all of this is happening at a time when the world needs this work more than ever before–as we grapple with unprecedented levels of polarization and division, and complex global challenges that impact us wherever we live. Because of this, I know it is the right time to make space for a new executive to collaborate with our team to grow the organization to the heights we imagine in the decade to come: a thriving network of 10,000 schools centering global competence and building equitable, inclusive, and future-ready learning environments for all kids. 

Those who know me well know that I often stress the “Co” in my Co-Founder title, because I wouldn’t have begun this journey without my fellow Co-Founder, Madiha Murshed. I wouldn’t have stayed the course for so long without Madiha’s foundation, and without the tremendous team members and supporters who grew this work alongside me for more than two decades. I love this work, and it will always be an extension of my values and beliefs in the deepest way. It fills me with pride and optimism to see what began as such a small, ambitious endeavor making such an impact through the leadership of so many. 

As for what happens next, working closely with a Founder Transition Coach, we have created a Transition Team comprised of board members and staff to ensure that the entire process from now through the onboarding of a new leader minimizes disruption to our daily activities and supports our new leader as they take on the CEO role. Additionally, the Board has assembled a dream Search Team of board members and World Savvy stakeholders to lead the way in finding our next leader. A message from our Board Chair, Linda Ireland: 

As Board Chair, I am tremendously proud of what Dana has contributed over 20 years to bring World Savvy to this juncture. She is a marvel, living our values, inspiring so many to share in our mission, and working tirelessly to make World Savvy a leader in reimagining education to be what our young people deserve and our world needs. We are proud of the leaderful organization Dana has built. Our World Savvy staff, clients, stakeholders, and investors are incredible. As Chair of our Search Team, I am excited for what will come next for us all, especially the educators and students who will thrive as global citizens during World Savvy’s next remarkable chapter. We have a strong, experienced, and engaged Board committed to leaning into this transition with the intentionality, thoughtfulness, and enthusiasm it deserves. We have retained Good Citizen, a national search firm, to conduct a search beginning next month, with the intention of welcoming a new CEO by July 2024. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me at any time with questions or suggestions. ~Linda Ireland, Board Chair

Until next July, I will remain World Savvy’s very active and engaged CEO. Once our new leader begins, I will remain in a Founder-in-Residence role through the end of 2024, available to support new leadership and the organization in intentional ways that promote a smooth and effective transition. 

In this unique time of inflection, it is rising to the surface for me in visceral ways: we would never be here, at this place of national impact, without our phenomenal community of supporters, advocates, and partners. Many of you have already come forward pledging your continued full support when the day of my transition arrives. Thank you. It fills me with pride to know you see World Savvy as I do–a vibrant, strong, innovative, sustainable, essential organization much more powerful than any one person. My deep gratitude for each of you is hard to encapsulate, but it’s been the fuel for a movement that I have always believed, and will continue to, is changing education in the most important ways. 

In the coming months, we will transparently share our progress not only with respect to this transition but also to the critical work we continue to lead in schools nationwide. If you have any questions, concerns, or ideas about our transition process, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me, or to our Board Chair Linda Ireland, at ireland@humanvenn.com. 

Thank you, always, for continuing to be a part of this special community.

With gratitude,

Dana Mortenson
CEO and Co-Founder  

At The Wildling, stories are #1. Since the organization’s founding, The Wilding has been empowering youth to share bravely from their lived stories in a safe and meaningful way. And we can’t wait to invite you into the next chapter of this story: 

The Wildling is becoming part of World Savvy!

As we welcomed The Wildling to the World Savvy family with an open house this week, and as we work together over the course of the coming school year to embed The Wildling’s approach and resources to support World Savvy’s school partners, we want to invite you into this story. We are thrilled to be partnering together, and can’t wait to share more over the coming years about how The Wildling’s programming is better supporting educators and students to connect and share their stories, and how this partnership with World Savvy will expand the reach of this innovative and meaningful programming to students across the country. For now, we invite you to learn more about our journey to this exciting milestone…

World Savvy: What sparked your interest in this partnership?

The Wildling: When we met Dana Mortenson, we were inspired by her vision from the first moment. Having built The Wildling from the ground up four years prior, with stars in our eyes and a lot of grit, we were beyond impressed to hear about Dana’s story and how she had spent more than 20 years building World Savvy into an organization that works with entire schools and districts to inspire thousands of future-ready learners. 

The Wildling was always about imprinting young people with a sense that who they are matters first and that they have a story to tell and share that will inform their learning path—with the right guidance and approach. When we heard Dana share “cultivating connections” as a core pillar of World Savvy’s model—and the belief that each learner is part of something bigger—her words felt like an arrow striking right at the heart of our mission at The Wildling.

We knew after our conversation with Dana that we would be stronger together—and that is how we have always approached partnerships, feeling our way with intuition and knowing that we can harness that energy for more impactful results. We wondered: How could we leverage our impact and meet the great demand that was upon The Wildling after a pandemic and with a mental health crisis in front of us, and with educators who were asking for programs like ours to support their efforts to shore up their classrooms. We couldn’t be everywhere at once, and we had a lot to sort out to grow. When World Savvy asked about the potential for an integration, we knew right away that this was something we were interested in discussing further. This would mean giving our dynamic and impactful young program a home that would impact thousands, if not millions, of kids in the years to come—to feel and find their place in the world and to know how much they matter. 

World Savvy: This partnership was such an obvious fit for us. At World Savvy, we identify and nurture connections—between students and educators, among peers, between a school and the wider community—to make learning personal and relevant for all students. And one of the key ways that we as humans form connection is by telling stories, and cultivating empathy and understanding as we listen to others tell their stories. 

We are so excited to leverage The Wildling’s dynamic and engaging frameworks and resources in a variety of ways to better support educators and students. Year one of a World Savvy partnership is focused on Cultivating Connections—a theme that is deeply aligned with The Wildling’s program. There are a variety of ways for students to engage with the materials, from sharing personal narratives or utilizing the resources as a vehicle for sharing knowledge and encouraging discourse. Sharing together in this way helps students to develop key competencies they’ll use throughout their lives, such as engaging willingly and openly with others, demonstrating self-awareness about identity and culture, choosing empathy, and so much more.

What are you most excited about as The Wildling joins World Savvy?

The Wildling: Oh my. What are we NOT excited about? We couldn’t be happier. When people ask how this integration came to be, we say we have followed our curiosity from the very start. That is how The Wildling was born—a storyteller and an educator with big hearts and curiosity who wanted to help youth find their way back to the innate storytellers inside of them so they could share themselves freely and bravely. To have World Savvy approach us with the idea of an integration—watching The Wildling become an integral part of programming for classrooms upon classrooms of kids—is something we didn’t even understand was possible until the question was asked: What if you became part of us? 

We can’t wait to watch our program shine even brighter as we work together to reimagine what it looks like to cultivate connections in every classroom, making learning more personal and relevant for all people. This is a foundational belief we share as organizations. It is inspiring and expansive, and critical in this modern world to approach education in this way. It is essential.  

One thing we see every time we come together at a Wildling Story Jam, after-school setting, or school classroom, is that human beings at a very young age crave connection—to themselves and to their peers and to their teachers and to their caregivers and to the many people who are part of their everyday life. We have a tendency to forget that our innate ability as human beings to share from the content of our lives brings unity and community. It is this foundational piece of The Wildling that connects directly to World Savvy’s mission—you belong, you matter. YOU and YOUR STORY are where we need to start. We are meant to learn this together. 

To continue to follow our story, visit https://www.worldsavvy.org/contact/ and sign up to stay informed.

Being a teacher includes moments that feel like you’re a rock star. When that impromptu, perfectly timed joke you insert into a lesson meets raucous laughter and a bit of friendly taunting from your students, while also infusing the class with energy and a sense of unity. That time a student wants to linger after class or eat lunch with you or reaches out after they graduate to keep talking with you about ideas from class. When you and the other faculty/staff secretly learn a dance routine and perform it at a pepfest or other school event, your dance song is barely audible over the students’ laughter. When your elementary student from three years ago still runs over and hugs you as you’re walking your students to the bus, or when your former secondary student emails you to tell you that they’re majoring in the discipline you taught. When you witness a student come alive as they engage with their community for your class or school, and they begin to recognize and cultivate their sense of agency.

At their most inspired moments, teachers are filled with the warm buzz of knowing that every day they are nurturing students’ curiosity, discovery, and knowledge of both themselves and the world. In more challenging times, teachers can feel like a cog in a system that is resistant to change, monitoring and coercing students to care about points, policies, and curricula that feel archaic and irrelevant.

Never have we demanded more from teachers than we do right now, and never have the challenges of teaching been harder. Teachers must innovate and experiment while coping with scarce resources and inequality and overcome inertia and muscle memory that hold tight to old approaches to old problems, luring us to “return to normal” because we’re not sure what else to do. Many feel isolated, lonely, detached from one another’s stories and experiences, overwhelmed by information and claims, and living in polarized communities fractured by cynicism and mistrust. As is the case with many global challenges, the past is not necessarily predictive or productive for strategically navigating the future; experts don’t know one-size-fits-all answers to our complex challenges in education. The way forward must emerge from curiosity, imagination,  innovation, and collaboration, demanding flexibility and experimentation in a space that does not promote or reward either.

Despite, and in fact because of these challenges, we recognize that young people today need to graduate equipped to collaborate and cooperate as active citizens in more diverse, local communities and with the knowledge and skills necessary for future jobs in a global economy. We need our students to emerge from K-12 education prepared as problem solvers, poised to address future local and global challenges that are increasingly interconnected and interdependent.

Teaching is a challenging job, not just because teachers have to support so many children in environments and circumstances that are often difficult in and of themselves, but because teachers have to do more than ever before. Kids used to come to school to learn information, and now they come to school to learn what to DO with information. 

Teachers are sacred guides who nurture spaces and experiences for young people to make sense of our current complex world, to build the skills to transform conflict and existential challenges, and to find hope and joy about what is emerging out of the uncertainty and disruption of the pandemic and societal polarization. 

It is an awesome task to adequately prepare young people for this complex and interconnected world, AND it has never been more urgent that teachers are successful. Teachers are nurturing the resilient peacemakers, courageous problem solvers, and passionate leaders our world so desperately needs.

So what can we do to truly appreciate and support teachers?

Administrators

More than a doughnut, canvas bag, or water bottle, what teachers really need is school leaders who root their leadership in curiosity, humility, and willingness to lead a process of transformation in education. In leading through complex times, school leaders must see themselves less as experts and more as hosts or guides of a process of inquiring, understanding, experimenting, reflecting, and scaling up promising innovations.  To appreciate your teachers:

• Provide time, support, and space for teachers to engage in inquiry and experimentation. Replace top-down professional development presentations and mandates with inquiry-based professional collaboration and learning, providing time and materials for teachers to collectively understand what’s going on for their learners and what school needs to look and feel like for children coming of age in the 21st century
• Crystallize clarity around your mission and eliminate requirements, demands, systems, traditions, and expectations that aren’t central to creating an innovative, equitable learning experience that prepares students to navigate and contribute to a complex, global world. Less is more for teachers working from a place of mastery, purpose, and autonomy. Chart out a path for transforming teaching and learning at your school, and stay committed for years, enabling teachers and students to learn, experiment, reflect, and refine.
• Learn about what it means to lead during complex (versus complicated) times. Our complex world demands that we lead without knowing all the answers and co-create the path forward through collective, iterative innovation. School leaders need to be hosts of this experimentation and innovation, nudging schools in strategic, positive directions. MIT’s Otto Scharmer states the job of leaders in today’s complex world is to transform awareness, to learn from the past and connect it with emerging future possibilities.
  
  “Attention, aligned with intention, can make mountains move… Almost all major challenges we face call on us to respond by letting go of the past to co-sense and co-create what is wanting to emerge.”

• Create a professional environment of curiosity, learning, failing forward, and reflection. Model curiosity, humility, not knowing, unknowing, bravery in experimentation, and innovation. Encourage and support teachers’ quick, safe-to-fail experiments to notice what seems to be working for innovating towards post-pandemic educational transformation.
• Clearly and frequently communicate with your school community about your process of transforming teaching and learning as we emerge from the pandemic, so that your whole school community shares a common narrative, understanding, and invitation to participate in inquiry and innovation, and so that teachers aren’t each having to individually communicate about changes in your school.

Families

• Recognize that teachers and students are navigating an unprecedently challenging, complex time in the education world. Author Arundhati Roy calls the pandemic a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. Creating a transformed learning experience that is relevant and equips young people with what they need to live as engaged global citizens involves experimentation and innovation. To appreciate your children’s teachers, let them know that you support innovation and transformed learning even if it doesn’t look and feel like your school experience from the 20th century. Ask how you can be of help.
• Understand that we are living in a complex world that is actually quite different from the world of our childhoods. Trust teachers and school leaders as they reinvent education for the 21st century. Be curious rather than critical when the school may change its schedule, grading/assessment system, or what assignments look and feel like. Meet the world with curiosity and hope. Transformative change requires courage, collaboration, experimentation, humility, and resilience. School leaders and teachers need to forge a path into somewhat unknown terrain; let them know that you appreciate that they are developing a learning experience for students that is relevant and transformational. Most students and teachers alike are desperate for a change in what “school” feels like. 
• If we want students to be creative, collaborative, and knowledgeable problem solvers, they need case studies with which to practice understanding and engaging with globally significant issues in their communities. What’s going on in your neighborhood, community, and/or workplace? How could you partner with your children’s school to share your network and resources to welcome students as investigators, collaborators, and contributors working on real, significant challenges in your community?

Students

• Just like students so desperately want to be seen and heard in their communities, your teachers are working in a job that is both hyper-social and lonely at times. Their hard work, resilience, intellect, compassion, and creativity are rarely noticed or celebrated in the education system. Teachers are fueled by hope and by faith that the seeds they are planting and nurturing in their students will flourish and be fruitful in the years and decades to come. Take a moment and tell your teacher in person, via email, via a brief note jotted on an assignment – “I see you, teacher.” I see those ice breakers you plan and those interactive activities you coordinate to help us learn. I appreciate the feedback you provide to help me deepen my thinking/writing/creating skills. I notice that you remember things about my life and that you smile at me. I see you bravely creating space for us to discuss, investigate, and understand what’s going on in our complex world and helping me figure out how I can contribute to make the world a better place in my life. I see you modeling how to be reflective, how to learn from mistakes, and how to be brave even when you might feel nervous.” Experts say that we humans need five pieces of positive feedback for every one piece of negative feedback. The busy, chaotic life of teachers provides plenty of challenging feedback. Be creative, generous, and persistent with your spontaneous positive feedback!
• When your teacher is trying something new or an activity doesn’t work as well as intended, help your class engage with your teacher as co-creators of learning, experimenters and innovators. Provide feedback. Offer to help. Step up to help build momentum and meaning for projects, recognizing that learning is something that you and your classmates do in a proactive way rather than something that happens in response to teaching.

Teachers, we see you. 

We see you…

• Caring and differentiating for your students even though you may have seen only half of each of their faces all year.
• Learning and experimenting with how to create a more equitable community in your own classroom, school, and in the world.
• Navigating COVID-related absences that are continually disrupting your classroom community.
• Agreeing that the education system needs to be transformed and exhausted by the urgency of the day-to-day and outdated PD and requirements.
• Helping students learn in your classroom while staying connected with kids who are quarantining.
• Supporting students to know more, care more, and do more in their lives and communities.
• Looking for energy and relevance and resources and a reminder of “Why am I doing this?”

World Savvy appreciates and supports teachers this week and every day!

World Savvy appreciates each teacher’s gifts and talents, which serve as the foundation for their students’ learning. We help teachers reconnect with what brings them joy as they cultivate fertile ground in their classrooms and communities where students learn and grow. To provide support for the awesome task that teachers have at this moment in time, World Savvy partners with schools and communities to prepare youth for our complex, global future. Our program prepares students to thrive in our globally connected world by re-imagining K-12 education, focusing on increasing student engagement, expanding teacher capacity and cultural competence, and strengthening school and district leadership. Using evidence-based tools and best practices for culturally responsive pedagogy and student-led learning, World Savvy is empowering teachers to make school inclusive, relevant, and engaging for all students, inspiring them to learn, work, and thrive as responsible global citizens.

The many globally minded elements of Melanie Peterson-Nafziger’s last 25 years converge as she eagerly joins the World Savvy team as their Professional Learning Facilitator in Minnesota. Melanie first discovered World Savvy in 2012 as one of five US educators for the World Savvy/American Youth Leadership Program, supporting U.S. and Bangladeshi students in developing global competency, investigating climate change during a month of travel in Bangladesh, and learning how to turn knowledge into action to live in solidarity. Melanie also worked as an Educator Advisor in World Savvy’s development of the Global Competency Certificate program.

Lessons from the Pandemic: A Brain in Pain Cannot Learn

At this point, educators must assume all students have been impacted by stress and trauma, from the pandemic or otherwise. The specifics of most traumas will never even be identified. In order to support students academically and emotionally, global competence skills such as empathy, self-awareness, and reflection must be intentionally embedded into classrooms in order to help students process emotions and develop resilience. In fact, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona recently tweeted, “Mental health challenges can impact a student’s ability to participate in learning. As we recover – it’s important to go beyond literacy & math to helping students build their social, emotional, and mental health skills.”  

The COVID-19 Pandemic manifested itself in schools like an emergency room triage, with educators doing all they could to meet the academic and social-emotional needs of students and their communities. This period of upheaval has had lingering effects on the mental health and anxiety levels of students, teachers, and administrators alike (see THIS ARTICLE from The New York Times). While our education system is deciding how it wants to move forward from here, something we all agree on is keeping Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in every classroom. According to Dr. Bill Daggett, of the National Dropout Prevention Center, “For trauma-impacted students, doubling down on instruction is not likely to produce increased content mastery.” In other words, a brain in pain cannot learn. 

If we want students to know more, we have to care more. At World Savvy, we believe a primary way to heal trauma-impacted students is by providing them with concrete social-emotional learning strategies to develop the skills and dispositions they need to navigate a complex and ever-changing world.

SEL is Global Competence

SEL is global competence, which is not content-based but rather can be applied across all grade levels and subject areas. Identifying and nurturing connections between individuals and issues makes learning more personal and relevant, and thus more engaging for students. It is false to think that educators should have to choose content or standards over key competencies such as social-emotional learning.

World Savvy addresses this with school partnerships to support preemptive planning that integrates social-emotional learning to cultivate connection and create classrooms where all students feel valued. Laying this foundation early in the school year has proven effects on bolstering resilience and making academic success more attainable. 

Comfort with ambiguity & unfamiliar situations

Trauma can look different for different people, and what might be traumatic for a student may not be traumatic for you. The pandemic and school shutdowns were unpredictable, dramatically increasing the incidence and impact of trauma for our youth. It is important to keep in mind that students’ perception and the emotional impact of trauma is more important than the source of the trauma itself. In order for students to be successful in school, the feeling of psychological safety must be reestablished. By maintaining SEL strategies in daily routines, students are more likely to feel equipped to handle ambiguous and unfamiliar situations. This way, they are moving past being trauma-informed, and toward being skilled to work through trauma by drawing upon global competencies rooted in social-emotional learning that provides a sense of grounding security when navigating inevitable situations outside of their control.  

How do educators address the pressure to catch students up, while simultaneously modifying school climate to rebuild resilience in trauma-impacted students? World Savvy believes in helping schools create systems and routines that prioritize building connections with students, while also making space for student voice in classroom culture, curriculum, and instructional decisions. In addition, we collaborate with educators to lead activities that help students to boost skills relating to resilience, self-regulation, and self-management in order to ensure they are prepared with the social-emotional learning tools to persevere through challenges. Our work supports educators in cultivating connections and intentionally integrating SEL into their classrooms as a useful tool to help students find comfort in ambiguity. 

Empathy & Appreciating Multiple Perspectives

Social-emotional learning really takes flight in environments where diversity is celebrated and multiple perspectives are valued. According to a report by the OECD, “Future generations will need to interact in person with other young people whose opinions, backgrounds, and personalities vary widely. This interaction is essential to cultivate a future society in which people are curious, compassionate to needs other than their own, and able to listen deeply in order to understand one another.” With a more ethnically and culturally diverse school-aged population than ever before, classroom practice needs to reflect the evolving needs of today’s students. Diversity is an opportunity to make learning spaces more empathetic and culturally relevant. World Savvy understands that this change does not occur overnight, and like all growth and learning, it is an intentional process. The foundation of this process lies in social-emotional learning practices that focus on developing global competence skills such as self-awareness and empathy. Empathy occurs when judgment or indifference is replaced with understanding and caring. Students must have a strong understanding of their own self, thoughts, and feelings before they can empathize with others. By supporting how students better see themselves in others, they can more aptly relate to those with diverse experiences and challenges. 

Committing to the Process of Continuous Learning and Reflection

Reflection is a social-emotional learning strategy that propels learning forward, for adult and child learners alike. It also has boundless positive impacts on mental health, but for many, personal mindfulness can feel unnatural or overwrought. Rachel Wlodarksy, Ph.D. in Urban Education, says, “Reflective processes take time, and consequently… reflection must reach a level of practiced engagement so that, when the pressures of decision-making emerge, the professional defaults to better quality decisions.” 

World Savvy agrees reflection is a skill that requires effort and must be rigorously taught in order for students and teachers to achieve any of the numerous benefits. In order for reflection to become practiced and consistent, we support educators to integrate it into their practice in a variety of ways that feel true to their individual styles. We also encourage educators to prioritize reflection, which means not to sacrifice it, even if they are running behind and the task list seems insurmountable.

The key to implementing meaningful and purposeful reflection practices is finding the approach and framework that most authentically suits educators’ and school leaders’ needs. Some forms of personal reflection activities World Savvy offers focus on relieving stress and connecting to and processing emotions. Another way World Savvy integrates reflection into classrooms is as an academic exercise, for example setting aside time daily for students to consider how they more effectively consume and learn content. Students can benefit academically from reflecting on their workflow, collaboration skills, and productivity as a way to imprint information. Finally, reflection is helpful as a tool for school leadership to peacefully alter student behavior in lieu of traditional disciplinary actions. Teaching students how to reflect on their actions can foster intrinsic motivation to change, rather than more traditional methods that include imposed consequences or punishments.

Reflection is an essential tool to facilitate the personal development of teaching professionals. In our workshops, there are frequent opportunities for reflection to connect learning to one’s own teaching practice. In addition, during 1:1 coaching, reflection comes in the form of targeted open-ended questioning and thoughtful contemplation of feedback or assessing student work in order to grow as an educator serving deserving communities of diverse students. This not only benefits professional growth, but it also helps teachers model this practice for students in an authentic way. 

If We Want Students to Know More, We Have to Care More

The trauma caused by the COVID-19 pandemic unfortunately cannot be fully erased by educational intervention. That said, what educators can do is establish systems and practices that incorporate social-emotional learning so they can mitigate the long-term effects of trauma. By providing students with the tools to become more resilient, collaborative, and emotionally intelligent individuals, rigorous learning in a post-pandemic world becomes more attainable.

With so many demands on educators, starting to integrate social-emotional learning, or even maintaining it throughout the school year, can feel daunting to balance on top of other school and district requirements. Nonetheless, influential philosopher and education reformer John Dewey provides the timeless belief that educators have an awesome responsibility to determine, with the help of others in society, what content and activities enhance individual personal and social growth and lead to the improvement of society. World Savvy is here to do just that – help educators select authentic activities that boost personal and social growth. By partnering with schools to establish mindful classroom rituals in collaboration with students, World Savvy assists educators in providing students with the skills necessary to be resilient global citizens.

Marley Wertheimer is World Savvy’s Professional Learning Facilitator in the Bay Area since 2021, and holds a CA State Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential, Montessori Secondary I&II Credential as well as a Masters in Education (M.Ed). Marley believes it is crucial for education to take place both in and outside of traditional classroom walls, which includes rich immersive and project-based learning experiences, in order to prepare students to be globally-competent citizens.

Power. Resilience. Boundless Curiosity. Humanity.

These were the themes of SXSW Edu 2022, and as I moved around from keynote to workshop to podcast to meet up, I saw these themes being lived out and explored.

As a former classroom teacher and current staffer at a nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate and prepare young people for life in a global community, I could not help but think of these themes through the lens of the student experience. How are we empowering them to take action on the issues they care about? How are we encouraging them to be curious citizens who can find comfort in ambiguity and change? And how we are seeing and honoring all the identities that our students bring to the table? 

Student Voices in Materials and Curriculum:

On Tuesday morning, journalists Antonia Hylton and Mike Hixenbaugh took the stage to discuss their podcast “Southlake”, which details a Texas town’s battle over race and American identity.  They were joined by librarian Carolyn Foote and author George M. Johnson who are both on the front lines of this battle as they fight to ensure that libraries and schools are places where all students can see themselves and have access to diverse stories that show the true breadth of humanity. It was heartening to hear how these individuals were challenging the playbook used by parents and school boards across the country to ban books and curricula that elevate the stories of marginalized groups. It was also a call to action. 

The materials we use in schools must be diverse and inclusive – a true representation of the real world. 

In addition, school should be a place where students explore their own identities and learn to appreciate the identities of others. We need only look at the baseless invective about Critical Race Theory and the vicious laws passed in both Texas and Florida that aim to dehumanize the most vulnerable among us to know that our country is failing to embrace and honor the experiences of ALL who live here. It is scary for teachers to wade into these “debates” and put themselves in the path of angry parents and legislators, and I do not want to underestimate how hard that is. But we also have to think about the students whose identities are being maligned and erased from the school experience; they need us. As English teacher Lamar Timmons-Long said during his meet-up about Civics Education, “If the materials I choose don’t encourage my students to think about who they are and who they want to be, then I’m not doing my job as an educator.” 

Student Voices in the Classroom:

If we want young people to feel empowered and curious about the world, then we have to elevate their voices inside the classroom.

Teachers need to design curricula that can adapt to the interests and needs of the students in front of them. We need to focus less on the content being taught and more on the WAY we are teaching it. How can we create processes for learning that allow us to respond to student needs and interests while also ensuring that we are preparing them for life in a complex and diverse world? If we can see curriculum as not just WHAT is being taught but HOW things are being taught, we can create classrooms that are both academically rigorous and responsive to student interests and needs. 

We do not have to sacrifice rigor or skill development when we center student voice and agency

As we heard during the workshop from World Savvy’s Chief Program Officer, Mallory Tuominen, and Finnish educator and consultant Petteri Elo, phenomenon-based learning is an effective way to both center student voice and develop the essential skills that young people need. In order to call something “Phenomenon-based Learning”, the phenomenon must come from a student’s own lived experience–the starting point is something to which the student is connected. This sets it apart from project-based learning, which could be about anything from Ancient Rome to WWII. But while the starting point is more personal, the learning process is the same. This proves that we do not have to sacrifice rigor or skill development when we center student voice and agency–it is not one or the other. In fact, when students have a real hand in their own learning, when they feel seen and valued, and when they know their ideas matter, they will perform better.

Student Voices in the School:

For far too long, education has been something that happens TO students, not WITH them. 

We often talk of parents as being our partners in education, but rarely if ever do we talk of students in the same way. As we come out of the pandemic and begin to rethink how we do school, it is imperative that we include students in these conversations. Want to know what schedule would work best for your students? Ask them. Want to know what curriculum changes will benefit students most? Ask them. As Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona commented during his keynote on Wednesday morning, “We serve THEM. They are the experts in what they need. They have to have a seat at the table.”

Centering student voices and honoring the diverse experiences they bring to our schools is how we ensure they are prepared to positively engage in this complex and ever-changing world. When we empower students to make choices and take action, we encourage their curiosity. By providing them with a diverse array of stories and voices, we give students space to explore the issues they actually care about. When we help them find comfort in ambiguity and change, we build their resilience. And when we incorporate their stories into the curriculum and let their voices shape our schools, we honor their humanity.  

We cannot lose our sense of urgency to transform our education system into a place that serves everyone, and students must be partners in this work. 

KK Neimann has a Master’s in Teaching and Curriculum from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has been working in education for almost 20 years. She has taught social studies at every grade level between 5th and 12th in both public and private school settings, and presented at both regional and national conferences on how to grade for global competence. Prior to coming to World Savvy, KK spent 9 years at the Blake School in Minneapolis where she designed and implemented a Humanities program for 6th graders that blended reading, writing, and inquiry with the goal of building students’ global competence.

“Engagement efforts for youth are often developed and conjured by adults without a listening process. If you want deep learning, then you have to have engagement, and if you want engagement, then you have to know how it’s defined by the people who are most proximate to the work.”

– Dana Mortenson

Last month, World Savvy had the great fortune of partnering with youth leaders from Bridgemakers, Cole Stevens and Talia Moreno, and youth development leader and President of Youthprise, Marcus Pope. Together, they sat down with World Savvy’s CEO and Co-Founder Dana Mortenson for our virtual event, Supporting Youth-Led Systems Change, and discussed real solutions to elevate student voices and collaborate with adults in meaningful and productive ways.

The conversation left us inspired and activated! If you didn’t get a chance to join us, view a complete recording of the conversation.

1. Show that you care about the person. The adage is true: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. See young people as human beings first, before you see them as students. Their well-being and mental health matter above the grades or ability to get into college.
2. Listen with intent. Allow those closest to the issue to speak for themselves, and when youth do, make sure you are actively listening instead of thinking about or declaring your own thoughts or opinions. Ask more questions. Intentionally schedule time with young people, especially those who may be in an administrator or leadership position. Take a look at your calendar and ask yourself how often you hear from those who are the most impacted by your work.
3. Make everything more relevant. Engagement thrives on relevancy. Unfortunately, many of our systems for young people are not intuitively designed to support this, which means there can be an artificial separation between community and school. So, how can school be a way to reflect what young people authentically care about and what we actually want them to go out into the world and be able to do? This requires educators with great intentions to let go to create student-centered environments where students are leading, and educators are facilitating that process instead of directing it. “There is no reason schools shouldn’t be community centers and places of innovation and ideas,” Cole Stevens.
4. Be honest about what you can achieve and the timeline for change to occur. There are numerous entrenched systems and practices that prevent change from happening easily. Be upfront about what it’s going to take to get something done. Young people can handle it.
5. Don’t be afraid to challenge young people. Young people are not always right. Do not be scared to challenge the ideas you disagree with, just as you would with a fellow adult. Young people are smart, but they don’t know what they don’t know. Challenging youth when they are wrong is how they become better problem solvers. Do not sugarcoat feedback or paint an inauthentic picture. Youth want to understand the problem so they can help design solutions.
6. Value young people as experts. Don’t expect students to always volunteer their time. They have jobs and bills to pay. Just as you would for adult experts, there might need to be some payment or credit for their time. Their lived experience matters and has value.
7. Consider starting small to build trust. Simply asking for youth engagement will not always result in immediate participation, mainly if there has been a history of authoritative decision-making. Recognize that young people have not always had supportive adults in their lives who value their opinion. You will have to earn their trust. Start small as a demonstration of your commitment. Their engagement will eventually follow.
8. If you invite a partnership with a young person, be prepared to act. Authenticity matters. If you say you want to transform the system, be ready to follow through with actions.
9. Be bold, be courageous and stand up. Don’t be afraid to take a bold stand with youth if you believe in the change they are calling for. It won’t always be easy to take a stand, but change cannot occur without courage.
10. Accept together that change is messy. Youth and adults may agree that a particular change is needed, but the strategy to create change may vary based on perspective. How diplomatic are we versus challenging and calling people out? Do we leverage social media, and how? You will encounter unexpected hurdles as you take one step forward and two steps backward. Recognizing together that the path to progress is rarely smooth will help you get back on track to achieving your goals.

Answers to Live Audience Questions 

Bridgemakers Event: Audience Questions

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