worldfest

Teaching 21st Century Skills By Practicing Them

Submitted by David B. Crowley on Fri, 02/10/2012 - 7:07am

Last week, Woburn Public Schools (WPS) Superintendent Mark Donovan stopped by the International Learning Center to meet the the student leadership team that is working with us to plan the WorldFest Woburn multi-cultural festival. These adult learners are recent immigrants from over twenty countries, participating in a wonderful program offered by the YMCA of Greater Boston.

During this meeting, we were exploring ways that the WPS students and their families could get more involved in the WorldFest event this year. Mr. Donovan embraced this idea eagerly, noting that there are now over 50 languages spoken at home by the WPS students. When I went to WPS over 20 years ago, I suspect I could have counted the number of languages spoken by students on my fingers. Mr. Donovan spoke passionately about how in our increasingly diverse communities and global economy, appreciation of different cultures and ability to work effectively across difference as a vital "21st century skill". That is for sure!Read more

How do you say leadership? Notes from Multi-Cultural Leadership Session 1

Submitted by David B. Crowley on Wed, 06/02/2010 - 8:23am

How do you say leadership in your first language?  This question kicked off an interesting discussion in our first Multi-Cultural Leadership Project yesterday.  Through this collaboration with the YMCA International Learning Center (ILC) in Woburn, I'll be training a dozen adult English language learners on leadership skills.  The students will be using the training to coordinate a WorldFest multi-cultural event in the community next spring.  They are very excited about the project, and the prospects of learning useful job skills while contributing to their new community.

Yesterday's group was representative of the diversity of the ILC, which serves students from 20 countries who speak 14 different languages. This brought a lot of different cultural perspectives to bear on our conversation about leadership!Read more

Syndicate content