Episode #103. Saturday April 23, 2022, 4:00 pm Eastern (3:00 pm Central)
In this increasingly diverse and globally connected world, global education and exchange opportunities are increasingly vital. Enter World Savvy which is a national nonprofit that works with educators and community leaders for the past two decades that focuses on creating inclusive schools where young people effectively engage in activities that involve extensive problem solving, empathy, and higher order thinking skills. With this World Savvy support, students engaging in real-world challenges and in their communities and across the globe. In effect, World Savvy effectively prepares young people to be “future ready” learners.
World Savvy is building classrooms, schools, and communities that harness the unique power of diversity—in our demographics, in our lived experiences, and in our ideas. World Savvy attempts to create the next generation of courageous problem solvers, passionate leaders, and resilient peacemakers. At its core, the World Savvy model pivots around World Savvy School Partnerships (WSSP), which support system-wide change in schools—and districts—to embed global competence into teaching, learning, and school culture. This includes leadership development, staff development (including workshops and coaching), youth development that promotes student-led action, and evaluation and program assessment.
This core program is supported by Virtual Learning opportunities, including our online, graduate-level certificate program designed for K-12 educators to integrate global competence into instructional practice, the Global Competence Certificate, as well as strategic partnerships with organizations such as EF and EXPLR Media. Such certificates or micro-credentials are exploding in both K-12 and higher education settings. World Savvy’s impact is felt both in urban communities as well as rural areas which are currently experiences dramatic demographic shifts.
Importantly, at this time, World Savvy is partnering with stakeholders across the K-20 education pipeline to build regional ecosystems focused on global competence and the development of essential skills. It is had huge impact over its 20 years of existence. For instance, since its founding in 2002, World Savvy has reached more than 808,000 students and nearly 7,000 educators in 45 states and 32 countries. Per Dana Mortenson, the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of World Savvy, “The most profound impact of World Savvy’s programs is evidenced by educator and student engagement – our programs make teaching and learning real, experiential, and relevant for a changing world. As a result, students acquire the kind of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that not only prepare them for college, career, and life in a global society, but help them identify as global citizens who are motivated to contribute to peace, justice, and sustainability for our world.”
World Savvy is clear about its quite ambitious goals – by 2035, World Savvy plans to engage a network of 10,000 K-12 schools in diverse geographies across the US, reaching an estimated 5 million students.
More about our guests after the video
Anna Lehn, MS Urban Education, teaches 8th grade ELA at Ella Baker Global Studies and Humanities Magnet within the Minneapolis Public School District. In 2021 she presented at MELEd on translanguaging strategies for raciolinguistic justice in secondary classrooms. In 2020, she published “Cool Theft: AAVE Appropriation as a Tool of White Hegemony” in the Minnesota English Journal. Trilingual, she is dual-licensed in ELA and ESL. She can be contracted at anna.lehn@mpls.k12.mn.us
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. She can be contacted at kk@worldsavvy.org.
Dana Mortenson is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of World Savvy, a national education nonprofit working to educate and engage youth as responsible global citizens. World Savvy supports change agents in K-12 education to create more inclusive, adaptive schools that ensure all young people can develop the skills and dispositions needed to thrive in a more diverse, interconnected world. World Savvy programs provide support at three critical levels to deeply integrate global competence into teaching, learning and culture: student engagement, teacher capacity, and school and district leadership support. Since 2002 she has led the organization through significant national expansion, reaching more 800,000 students and nearly 7,000 teachers across 45 US states and 32 countries, from offices based in Minneapolis, San Francisco, and New York.
Dana is an Ashoka Fellow, was named one of The New Leaders Council’s 40 under 40 Progressive American Leaders, and was winner of the Tides Foundation’s Jane Bagley Lehman award for excellence in public advocacy in 2014. She is a frequent speaker on global education and social entrepreneurship at high profile convenings nationally and internationally, and World Savvy’s work has been featured on PBS, The New York Times, Edutopia and a range of local and national media outlets covering education and innovation. She can be contacted at dana@worldsavvy.org.
Cindy Derrane is the Assistant Principal and Co Coordinator of the Global Citizenship Program of Norwood High School in Norwood, MA. She holds a M. Ed. in counseling and social work from Bridgewater State College. She was a Spanish teacher and World Language Department Chair before becoming the Assistant Principal. She is in her 30th year at Norwood High School. She can be contacted at cderrane@norwood.k12.ma.us.
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