Partnership and collaboration opportunities

As Participate Learning Alumni, you know first-hand how valuable global learning is to opening our world and expanding young minds. For all the students in the Participate Learning Network—particularly those that may not have the opportunity to experience the world outside of their own country or communities—we believe it is critical to learn that the world is interconnected and that the diversity of human culture is something to celebrate. For these students, Ambassador Teachers like you have brought the world into their classrooms and have made the global community their community—and our current Ambassador Teachers continue to do this each and every day.

Even if you are no longer teaching in a U.S. school with Participate Learning, you can continue to make a significant impact on the students in the United States. We encourage you, as Ambassador Teacher Alumni, to connect with a current Ambassador Teacher and their U.S. classroom and establish a meaningful, global partnership through which you can implement classroom-to-classroom collaborations. All current Ambassador Teachers are required to complete at least one such connection per year, and we know they would be eager to connect with you. By maximizing the connections and opportunities you’ve gained as a Participate Learning Ambassador Teacher, you can continue to allow students and others to directly benefit from your experiences in the United States.

Establish a global partnership

There are several ways in which you can establish vibrant global partnerships:

• Partner with a current Participate Learning Ambassador Teacher and connect your classrooms so students can meet their peers from another part of the world. With the experiences you’ve gained as a Participate Learning Ambassador Teacher, you are not only a cultural representative of your home country—you are also a means to share U.S. culture with classrooms in your home country. As an Ambassador Teacher Alumnus, you have access to many U.S. classrooms through connections with other Ambassador Teachers in the Participate Learning Network as well as through our international education programs. Interested in creating a partnership between your classroom and one in the U.S. through Participate Learning? Submit this Classroom Connections Around the World form and stay tuned!

• ePals is a social learning platform for K-12 educators that facilitates communication and collaboration with classrooms around the world. Teachers can create groups for individual classrooms, team projects, school clubs, and local and global collaborations.

• iEARN is the world’s largest non-profit global network that enables teachers and students to collaborate on projects that enhance learning and make a difference in the world. iEARN involves more than 30,000 schools in over 130 countries and is a partner of the U.S. Department of State.

Global collaboration has a long-lasting impact on students and helps them to establish real and individual relationships with others around the world. Nothing is as powerful as first-hand experience and person-to-person connections. Examples of these types of collaborative projects abound, especially within our community of Participate Learning Ambassador Teachers. Connect your classroom and share your experience today!

Hear what other teachers have to say about the impact of virtual exchange in the classroom:

“I could not help but be struck by how engaged and enthused the students were, even as they experienced shock, while learning about the culture of some schools around the world.”

— Jhaneille Downer, second grade teacher from Jamaica

The opportunity to see and hear students of the same age in a different school from a different country really helped the students make concrete connections between the research we were doing and the greater world outside of their community.”

—Claire Aston, first grade teacher from the United Kingdom

“We had a Skype call with a school called Sunshine in La Lima, Cortes, Honduras. Children from Honduras could see them and talk to them in Spanish so my children here in North Carolina could communicate with them. Their reactions were amazing! They were very excited to see children speaking Spanish and learning English. There were some children with their same names, and they were very happy to know there are children with the same names in other countries! They want to do more Skype calls with other children more often.”

— Elsy Sibrian, kindergarten teacher from Honduras