World Savvy team members, National Director of District & Strategic Initiatives KK Neimann and Executive Director – Western Region Harben Porter, were invited to talk about our transformational work on the Make It Mindful education podcast with hosts Seth Fleischauer and Lauren Pinto.
In this episode, the hosts explore the concept of global competence with KK and Harben and in doing so, talk about how it can prepare students for the increasing complexity and unpredictability of our future. A key challenge schools face today is ensuring students graduate with the core skills that will be needed in a future that’s changing at such a rapid pace we can’t fully predict what jobs to prepare students for! KK shares that there is one certain thing we can tell young people about the future: they need to be prepared to navigate change and ambiguity.
How can schools equip their students with these essential skills to thrive in an uncertain future? World Savvy’s answer is through teaching for global competence – developing the skills, behaviors, and dispositions needed to thrive in a diverse, complex, and interconnected world.
KK and Harben also discuss the need for a shift in the traditional approach to teaching, toward one that’s more student-centered. Through our Comprehensive School Partnerships, World Savvy supports teachers to not only embed global competence into the classroom but also to make learning more relevant and personal to students so that they feel connected to the content, leading to better student outcomes.
But none of this is easy and pushback to new concepts and ideas is bound to happen. Perhaps Harben says it best. World Savvy is a partner that helps schools navigate “the messy work of systems change and transformation.” Learn more about our school partnership opportunities or connect us with a school today!
The Lorain County Chronicle-Telegram spotlighted World Savvy’s Changemaker Hub hosted at Lorain County Community College in Ohio on February 22, 2024. The day-long design thinking experience was attended by approximately 120 students and 15 educators from area schools, including Avon, Elyria, North Ridgeville, and Lorain. Together, they reimagined the future of learning and centered student voices to understand their perspective on how to better the educational experience.
“Southview eighth grader Josiah Dolores Laboy wants to see more people taking education seriously, saying that school is a place for not just learning but also having fun.”
World Savvy is an organization that partners with schools and districts to reimagine education and create more inclusive, student-centered, and future-ready learning communities. We are continuing to expand our work across the country. Connect us with a school or learn more about our school partnership opportunities.
There’s nothing like an international experience to shine a light on why schools need to better prepare students to become global citizens. That’s why World Savvy has partnered with EF Education First on their international educational trips for school leaders that highlight how to integrate culture, identity, and global competence into classrooms right here at home.
Our CEO, Dana Mortenson, recently appeared on Break the Ice Media’s Destination on the Left podcast with Nicole Mahoney. She was interviewed alongside Kate Berseth from EF to talk more about this partnership and the crucial need to embed global competence into our learning environments, as well as how our education system can better prepare students with the skills they need for success, leadership, and citizenship in our diverse and increasingly interconnected world.
World Savvy is an organization that partners with schools to reimagine education and create more inclusive, student-centered, and future-ready learning communities. We are continuing to expand our work across the country. Connect us with a school or learn more about our school partnership opportunities.
World Savvy is pleased to share a recent podcast discussion featuring CEO and Co-Founder Dana Mortenson, focusing on the fascinating intersection of Global Competence Skills and Artificial Intelligence.
During this conversation on WOUB Public Media’s NPR Teaching Matters podcast, Dana delves into how AI is reshaping the educational landscape and its potential to promote global competence, inclusivity, and active learning methodologies. At World Savvy we are passionate about empowering students to become responsible global citizens, and we are both curious and excited about the role AI will play in this.
Whether you’re an educator, a student, a parent, or anyone with an interest in the future of education and technology, this podcast is a valuable listen.
World Savvy is an organization that partners with schools to reimagine education and create more inclusive, student-centered, and future-ready learning communities. We are continuing to expand our work across the country. Connect us with a school or learn more about our school partnership opportunities.
The workforce that students are preparing for is changing at an unprecedented pace and will only continue to do so. The shift towards a competency-based education model is imperative, especially one that equips students with the essential skills needed to prepare them for a complex, ever-changing world.
This is what World Savvy’s CEO and Co-founder, Dana Mortenson, advocates for in a recent article, “Iterative Learning: Why Our Schools Need to Abandon Compliance,” which appeared in District Administration, a K-12 education publication. She explains how moving to a model of education focused on competencies will empower students to learn and re-learn for the rest of their lives.
District Administration is a leading K-12 education publication for school district leaders that covers topics in edtech, staffing, leadership, analysis, and thought leadership.
About World Savvy
At World Savvy, we partner holistically with schools to reimagine education and create more inclusive, student-centered, and future-ready learning communities. We do this by collaborating with schools to embedglobal competence–the skills, values, and behaviors that prepare young people to thrive in a more diverse, interconnected world–into their strategic vision, school environment, and teaching and learning practices. Connect us with a school or learn more about our school partnership opportunities.
Inspired Teaching’s Continued Exploration of School Connectedness
World Savvy’s CEO and Co-Founder, Dana Mortenson, spoke with the Director of Teaching and Learning at the Center for Inspired Teaching, Jennifer Fournel, about elevating student expertise and fostering cultures of connection.
Derived from the organization’s Global Competence Matrix, the World Savvy team uses Global Competence prompts — questions that “get outside of potentially more one-dimensional and surface-level understanding” — in place of traditional ice-breakers. Think “Describe the last time you tried something multiple times before finally getting it,” vs. “What did you do this summer?”
As you continue to learn more about your new students and work to build equitable, engaging learning environments, we hope you are inspired by the prompts Dana shared — as well as the rest of her conversation with Jenna — to build authentic connections and community in the school year ahead!
World Savvy is an organization that partners with schools to reimagine education and create more inclusive, student-centered, and future-ready learning communities. We are continuing to expand our work across the country. Connect us with a school or learn more about our school partnership opportunities.
World Savvy’s CEO and Co-founder, Dana Mortenson, was interviewed by SuperSpeaks podcast host, Mark Sparvell, about the age of generative artificial intelligence and its impact on education.
School and district leaders are guiding their institutions and organizations through a historic moment in education — the first back-to-school term in the age of generative artificial intelligence. Administrators are exploring what is required to prepare schools and students to thrive in this new era, — including the learning and unlearning needed to adapt. This discussion explores this new landscape and what we are learning about navigating it.
World Savvy is an organization that partners with schools to reimagine education and create more inclusive, student-centered, and future-ready learning communities. We are continuing to expand our work across the country. Connect us with a school or learn more about our school partnership opportunities.
World Savvy’s CEO and Co-Founder Dana Mortenson sat down with Carl Hooker for a thought-provoking conversation on education, technology, and culture.
In “A School Leader’s Guide to Adapting School Culture in the Age of Generative AI,” Dana and Carl dive deep into how the ongoing evolution of education intersects with the rapid advancements in generative artificial intelligence, underlining the urgency of nurturing essential skills in the next generation. The demand for new skills was already on the rise due to our increasingly interconnected world. However, the emergence of generative AI has accelerated the need for adaptability to an unprecedented level. How can school and district leaders help prepare students and teachers to adapt and succeed in the age of generative artificial intelligence?
World Savvy is an organization that partners with schools to reimagine education and create more inclusive, student-centered, and future-ready learning communities. We are continuing to expand our work across the country. Connect us with a school or learn more about our school partnership opportunities.
Comprised of three experts—Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, U.S. State Department Senior Advisor Hamse Warfa, and World Savvy CEO Dana Mortenson, the panel was moderated by William Guadelli, dean of the College of Education at Lehigh University. Several hundred people, including a group of middle school students from Ella Baker Global Studies and Humanities Magnet School, educators, and businesspeople attended this event. In addition to AI, the discussion covered several work and education-related topics, including globalization and what educators can do to best prepare students for the future.
Friedman calls the current state of AI a “Promethean moment,” referring to the Greek myth in which Prometheus steals the fire from the gods on Mt. Olympus and gives it to humanity to build civilization.
He also likened it to the invention of the printing press but noted that the printing press took centuries to scale and that there could be unintentional damage done by the much faster speed at which AI technology is advancing.
Friedman believes the three things that will be most important for students and workers to successfully utilize AI will be self-motivation, access to technologies, and personal character.
Warfa added that he believed empathy and an inclusive society would also be needed to fully utilize coming technological advancement.
He hopes that the education system will be built to see and hear every student, regardless of background, and believes empathy will be required not only for the future of work but the future of building democracies and communities.
Despite the risks, however, AI technology such as ChatGPT could be a valuable tool in education.
“The reality is that inside schools you can lean into technology like generative AI to free up space to spend more time on the things that make us more uniquely human,” Mortenson said.
“Things that technology can’t do, enable empathy, collaboration, cross-cultural communication, and group work.”
She believes diversification of the education system is important, pointing out that more than 50 percent of students are now BIPOC, but that teachers are still predominantly White and monolingual. Although she is confident that AI will not be able to replace teachers, she believes that it will be useful for tutoring students and assisting in the education process.
Mortenson discussed the importance of an education that prepares students for a future in which she says, “85 percent of the jobs that will exist when [current students] go out into the world don’t exist today.” She also said it was important to be able to consider programs that can meet diverse needs of students of different backgrounds, noting that both rural and urban classrooms in Minnesota have undergone large demographic shifts in the past couple of decades.
Ella Baker students asked about the disruption to education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and questioned what can be done to catch up on the education of any students whose learning was affected by the pandemic.
Mortenson responded on behalf of the panel and was optimistic, saying that the educational disruption caused by COVID could be an opportunity to improve the education system for the future by, “leveraging technologies to meet students where they are.”
Mortenson mentioned programs at Ella Baker, such as the community ambassadors’ program, as an example of a model that could be used to build empathy and collaboration in the learning environment.
World Savvy is an organization that partners with schools to reimagine education and create more inclusive, student-centered, and future-ready learning communities. We are continuing to expand our work across the country. Connect us with a school or learn more about our school partnership opportunities.
On April 13th, 2023, World Savvy and Lakes Country Service Cooperative (LCSC) brought together students and teachers from west-central Minnesota for a day of exploration and solution-seeking. Over 60 students were in attendance exploring the student-selected theme, “Promoting well-being for all at all ages.”
The day-long event was sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota. Using World Savvy’s Knowledge to Action (K2A) framework, youth learned from local experts and each other as they planned a co-creative response to a pressing local issue. Read more about how their day of thinking outside the box was explored.
“The goal is for the students to explore something that interests them and to learn how to think completely about something … when you are curious, what does it look like to understand it,” mentioned KK Neimann, the director of professional learning for World Savvy. “How can we help them feel like what they are learning is relevant and to empower them to not feel overwhelmed with what is going on across the globe.”
World Savvy’s community-based Changemaker Hubs are designed to:
Help young people make connections between pressing global challenges and their local community.
Provide a forum for youth to share their perspectives about community needs and solutions.
Build the skills, capacity, and networks required to take informed action on issues of consequence.
Leveraging World Savvy’s Knowledge to Action (K2A) framework, youth-led design challenges bring students together to create ideas for action in their local community. These steps help students identify an issue they care about, build their knowledge and understanding of the complexity of the problem they are hoping to solve, and support the creation of informed solutions designed to tackle the issue’s root causes. Design challenges conclude with an opportunity for students to share their ideas with a broader community.
We are continuing to expand our work across the country. Connect us with a school or learn more about our school partnership opportunities.
