 Welcome to the newest episode of Up Close with Sarah Snead, the podcast where we have conversations about the present and future of public education. Today we're going to explore what's happening in our public schools and among public school educators in the area of globalization and global learning. The NEA Foundation has a year-long global learning fellowship program wherein in this past year we engaged 46 educators in a year-long study about global learning that culminated in an international field study to Peru. And so I'm very, very excited as we think about global learning and what it means in a world that is increasingly more interconnected that we have with us today one of the educators who has been a participant in the Global Learning Fellowship Program, Michael Dunlia. So let me tell you a little bit about Michael Dunlia. Michael is in his 19th year of teaching. Presently he is at the Olson Middle School in Tabernacle, New Jersey. And he is a nationally celebrated educator who has won many, many awards. He has national board certification. He's an alternate root teacher with experience in preschool first, second, third, and fifth. He has two master's degrees. One of which is from my undergraduate school in Alma Mater, Mount Holyoke College. You can't beat that. But he has a couple of times over been a county teacher of the year and a finalist for the New Jersey State Teacher of the Year. He also has received a humanitarian award for programming that he began in his state after Hurricane Sandy. And he, for that same work which was developing an organization that helped homeowners with cleanup costs, he received an award from Governor Chris Christie. But then in 2018 he was a recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching. Then again in 2020 he was the Burlington County, New Jersey Teacher of the Year. And again a finalist for the New Jersey State Teacher of the Year. In that capacity he also was a winner of one of the prestigious Horace Mann Awards for Teaching Excellence. It's a very prestigious award conferred upon only five educators at the NEA Foundation's annual Salute to Excellence in Education Gala. And we are especially proud that Michael also is a 2020, well this year he participated in the NEA Foundation's Global Learning Fellows Program which is what he's here to talk with us about today. So with that introduction and I know Michael you probably have many other accolades. But let's get to our conversation about your experience with global learning. Well thank you for having me. I'm almost embarrassed when you're with an intro like that. Well you should not be those are your accomplishments and worthy of note and recognition. But let's just jump right in Michael. First and foremost I'd just like to understand after all that you have experienced how you are defining global learning. A lot of people may not know what this global learning is all about. I would imagine that I would define global learning as bringing the world into your classroom and your classroom out to the world and that is a very ambiguous and broad statement. I've come to learn that the more I do this type of teaching and learning that it doesn't have to be far away it could be quite local. So it's all about I think the common thread is just having relationships with people from other places around the world or other places around your country or even in your community. But it's really getting to know people and then adding on to it when you have that global you're expanding that the lens under which you include others from around the world. Well as I've just shared Michael you are a very very accomplished and celebrated educator. Why did you prioritize global learning for yourself and for your students? It's interesting because sometimes when people ask questions you don't always know the answer right away you have to think about them and come up with it. But this answer I do know. I was attending a conference. It was an ESET 2 conference which stands for elevating and celebrating effective teachers in teaching. And it was out of the Bill Gates Foundation that had sponsored these ESET 2s around the country. And there was a board member from the NEA Foundation named Maryam Woods Murphy who had been championing the concept around global learning. And she always tells the story about how when she first married they moved to Spain and she could only speak Spanish the entire year and it really gave her such a perspective about what it's like to be a foreigner in another country and have the language barrier and the empathy that that experience fostered in her. And it was a lifelong lesson that she continued to share with her students. And she asked everybody in her session you know how global is your classroom like what are you doing to to bring that that element and it really was a moment when I reflected on what I was doing in my classroom and I have been fairly highly effective in a lot of my methods and strategies and I realized that I could identify a missing gap that there was something really not there. And I went back and I asked my kids after that conference I said you know to the students I was in third grade at the time possibly second it was probably second grade and I said to them you know how many languages are there in the world and they said two I'm like okay what are they and they said English and Spanish and I was like okay. And then I said you know just for fun what do they speak in Spain and they didn't even make the connection between Spain and Spanish. So I realized that their lack of knowledge of something like that was on me as an educator and I had to do something to fix that and we then googled how many languages are there in the world and the kids found out that there are 7,919 live languages which just really blew their minds and mine because honestly I didn't know the answer and I'm sure that that's it. It's a debatable answer I'm sure you'll find different numbers but basically you realize that there's thousands right and it's not two. And it just really made me very aware that they didn't know something and I didn't know it and I needed to educate myself and experience things and I needed to bring that back and then kind of expand all of our horizons and so that session with Marianne was a very eye-opening one for me because it was easy for me to see something that I wasn't doing well. Wow and we are grateful also to Marianne Woods Murphy who was one of the architects of the NEA Foundation's Global Learning Fellowship Program and she continues to influence it to this day. So Michael, what an incredible intro. Tell us a little bit about what the Global Learning Fellowship Experience at the Foundation was like for you. Take people through the journey. It's interesting because everything that you kind of went down the list of things that I've been involved with and they all change you as an educator and as a person whether it be national board or if you're involved in teacher fellowships. The experience that I've had with the NEA Foundation Global Learning Fellowship has been both outward and inward. When we started off they put us in a room and we met in Washington D.C. for some training and some professional development and learning around the topics of global learning and how would you bring that kind of teaching and learning into your classroom and if you are already doing it how can you do it better or more intentional? So it doesn't matter where you were on the spectrum of doing this everybody no matter if it was their beginning middle or they've been doing it for a while found things that they could do better. They organized us into what they called pods and so what was very fortunate is I met two educators from one from Maine, Marie Dixon and the other teacher is Riva Lobatos from Wyoming and prior to our involvement in this fellowship I had no interaction with either of them and so what began was not just a professional but also a personal relationship and a friendship that grew between the three of us and we were very fortunate to have a mentor Luke Murkowitz who I had known previously but not very as well as I know him now and he was an incredible guide and what we four because I would consider him part of it 100% what the four of us did was we created boxes representing our individual states Minnesota, New Jersey, Maine and Wyoming and in those boxes we put things that we felt kind of encapsulated the culture and the geography of the areas and we set these three boxes out to the other three schools so there were four in you you got them in the mail and we opened them and we had zooms together and we would explain the kids got up and explained why we put whatever Jersey items there were or whatever Wyoming items there were and what was really interesting was not only do we have time differences through time zones we had weather differences because of climates we had language accents Minnesota and you know Jersey and Maine I mean these are very distinctive accents but then Riva teaches on Indian reservation where there are two tribes of Indians who used to warring against one another and now they're living in peace on this reservation and so our class was able to have such a culturally rich experience just through the process of our training to get ready for the trip and it forged incredible bonds that when we went on this trip it was like being with old college friends and it allowed you to really relax and you're in a foreign country you are taking some risks and you just feel so at home when you know the person that the people that you're walking around with so it was a phenomenal experience so you just mentioned the trip and of course I know that that trip is the culminating field study that is conducted at the end of the global learning fellowship study year for the fellows but our our listeners won't know that this cohort we just took a cohort of educators 46 educators for 10 days to Peru and that was their culminating field study experience so Michael I'm going to let you tell our listeners about what that field study was about how you experienced it what it meant to you how it affected you but first of all we're teaching and living in a time of a global pandemic so it's I think very germane to the conversation that our trip was long delayed and was in quite often it was in question as to whether or not it was even going to be able to happen so there was a long delay between our training and our field experience but that was also interesting there's always benefits right there's always silver linings it allowed for a longer time for our friendships and our relationships both professional and personal to continue to develop and so there was a real sense of joy that's the one word that comes right to the top of the mind joy and relief to have finally gotten on that plane and left the airport and to have arrived at the very first airport and that while I was sitting in the Philadelphia airport waiting for my flight to take off there was another fellow from Indiana that was waiting for her flight a different one so that it even began before it began and arriving in Lima in the middle of the night there was just a sense of excitement and anticipation and all this training that you had been experiencing and different I guess you were just building it up in your in your mind and in your heart but there was such a strange way about this year because of COVID it was I hesitated I packed my suitcase at 9 30 Friday and I left Saturday 10 in the morning I think I was there's a lot of Irish superstition in me and I think I'm not I'm not chasing anything I'm going to make sure I wait till the last possible minute that no one tells me this isn't happening so we got to Lima we arrived and we began to have reunions so first out of the box it was just running into people that you haven't seen where you've only seen virtually and so there was this incredible sense of camaraderie and you weren't alone you're you're in this country but suddenly you had this group of people that were there for you and then we were huddled on the buses brought to the to the hotel the experience of the trip was one and there's it was a wide range of 46 educators from all across the country I have to be perfectly frank and admit that Peru may not have been on my top 10 travel list prior to this trip and now I am putting it at the top of my list of places I want to go back to the people the places the geography the culture the language all of it I studied a lot of Spanish in high school I use Spanish for quite a while in my job prior to teaching and when you use it it's there and when you don't you lose it and so the the 10 days the eight days 10 days that we were there I started to become reacquainted with with the Spanish language I have a deep desire to continue that even after we've come back I want to re-bring that back to the forward I want to become fluent again in Spanish and so that's something that is it inspired me to really it felt good to speak Spanish and to be able to communicate in a different language and and be understood but I don't I the trip left me speechless many many times the sheer beauty of the country I've never been to the Pacific Ocean I live on the Atlantic Ocean so it was thrilling just to put my feet in the Pacific Ocean while in Lima and then of course to go to Cusco up in the mountains at 12,000 feet above sea level it was just it was a challenge but it was it was amazing to say the very least right you know Michael and one of the participants in the the field study had commented at the end of it that you know it wasn't just an international trip it was also maybe even more so a journey of self-discovery and I thought that was a very profound reflection on the fellowship experience did that happen for you as well I mean would you would you describe it as such for yourself absolutely I mean one of the things that was I guess the authenticity is a word that really comes to mind because when I've worked with the sustainable development goals the SDGs and I teach them every year with my students and we often frame almost all of the learning that we do around them so somehow everything ties back to something in the SDGs whether it's ending poverty or hunger or access to quality education being there on that trip it was so authentic and real to see it in in the in the space that you were in physically I've never seen overcoming poverty and perseverance and and and resilience like that before it was inspiring and personally transformative for me as an individual I can come back now having seen and experienced the things that the SDG is talking about that are hard to sometimes convey to a rural southern New Jersey student body right or anywhere for them to understand what right especially in this country I mean we even had some of the debates between the fellows as to whether or not we had poverty like that in our country and although I'm sure we have equal cases we don't have the numbers we don't have the the expanse of it we don't have communities all suffering at that level of of dire need and and it was incredible I think when I asked the tour guide how do they define poverty line it was like you make seven dollars a week but you spend four and that was like very jarring to have a line so low you know and yet there that it was just we're comparing apples and oranges when we talk about some of these SDGs to our country and other countries around the world but despite those things those conditions those realities the people were incredible and their culture has sustained itself under so much colonialization and so much attack and and it it gave me so many ideas to bring back to my classroom about teaching things that I've been teaching all along like inequities in our country and our history to be able to example and show other places around the world that have suffered from colonization and and and the the destruction and the oppression of cultures to show examples where we're not currently part of that conversation we're not a player in that scenario so if it's Australia if it's Peru and the Spanish all these different places around the world it's so much easier to see what's right and wrong when you're not in the picture itself and to be able to kind of have that lesson learned before I then layer on top of it what our country's done and our country's history like determined that barometer of what is right and what is wrong what what people did to other people is wrong and when it's so much easier to see it somewhere else first and identify it and label it that way and then come out and have our conversation about what we've done here it makes it a lot harder to deny the truths when you've identified them in other populations around the world those are some pretty profound epiphanies and so I'm sure you're still reflecting on that experience and if it's not unfair I would like to ask you how you are going to bring the the thoughts you've just expressed to your students and what will it mean for for how you help them to further understand these differences and also how we are interconnected globally I think the simplest way is is that we often teach things in vacuums and silos where it's especially I've been early elementary I'm now upper elementary it's very I can't stand the lesson plan I can't stand the schedule where it says for 45 minutes we're going to talk about math and then for 45 minutes language arts everything is so interwoven I think the the what will happen in my classroom is that instead of teaching New Jersey history and American history I'm going to be teaching history where what happened at other places around the world and then bring it back and layer excellent excellent so what do you think going forward Michael what will global learning now look like what will it mean in your classroom if for my classroom I think it's just going to be lessons learned right if we can take stories from around the world and bring them into the classroom through a very organic way where we're going to learn about another place we're going to learn about culture and people and history and then what do we have in common where do we see the the similarities and the differences between our countries our people our religions it allows me to have them learn more about themselves because in order to compare something you need to know two things you know what you're comparing yourself against and so it's going to really I think frame so many different conversations in the classroom and there's even like other ways where as a teacher who teaches all subject matters to their students like I I teach everything language arts math reading history social studies the whole thing so I was thinking about even math where when we were driving through the streets of Peru and we have these different gas prices and sitting back going well how does that compare to gallons of gas in New Jersey and thinking about all of the rich computations that can happen with division and multiplication and yet we're talking about a very real thing it could be current gas prices in Lima Peru but yet now instead of just having them pointlessly divide and multiply and convert it's going to be about something very germane to the to the other elements if we've been talking about culture in Peru and talking about well what's the price of living in Peru and now now I'm teaching multiplication and division through a Peruvian lens and any other lens so it's global learning that can even impact math and you know you're talking about the distance you're talking about time zones you're talking about elevation and mountain there's so many math problems that can come through that while you're teaching about a place and your goal might be teaching about the people but there's such math that's embedded in there as well and even science and climate like we do climate action project every year a global learning project it'll be great now to have a connection to Peru and say well how is it impacting them and even economies like when we were at Machu Picchu it it was so painfully evident that when COVID shut the world down that whole place shut down there is no other industry in Machu Picchu beyond humans traveling and it just I thought to myself we're on the tail end of that we're on the after part I can't imagine the suffering and the loss that took place there during the time in which nobody was allowed to come indeed indeed so Michael what is it that you will want your students to to know to understand and to value through the exposure you're now going to give them to a global perspective I think what I want them to know is to to be open the word open open their mind open their hearts I was as I started out saying I never knew how much I was going to fall in love with Peru I didn't know enough about it and coming away I'm absolutely in love with Peru and want to go back I know that what we experienced was a sliver of what you can experience and it is lit inside me a fire to travel further and more expanding I have a desire to go to every continent you know we were in the southern hemisphere it was great to look up and see the southern cross things that you've read about I want my children to be inquisitive and to be explorers and I want them to have a thirst for for learning not just information but about people and to really connect to the world it's so hard to remain indifferent when you've been somewhere and you've met people from there you suddenly now care about there and I think that that's what the world needs is to have a lot less indifference and a lot more empathy and it can come from traveling and you know I always mess up the quote but Mark Twain's quote I even mentioned it while we were on the trip that travel is fatal to bigotry you know it it just we were trying to combat racism and equity inequity and and bias and simply a trip somewhere it does more than than I can't imagine how many hours of discourse the experience I want my children to experience it and have those connections even if it's through virtual connections you have given me goosebumps and the poignancy of what you have just said as a reaffirmation of why the ADA foundation also very greatly values this experience for educators thank you so much for those comments michael I I wonder also in keeping with all that you've just conveyed how will you interest your colleagues and or do you see interest among your colleagues or how do we grow further interest among other educators in this experience of global learning well it's interesting because through social media I have my parents my mother will kill me for this but she's 85 and my father's 87 and she was completely against me going she's like you can't go and travel around to another country like that your father your husband you have to stay home and there's COVID there's all these things so I use social media to really kind of calm her down and it kept live streaming from different locations so she would see we were there Corpus Christi day and the parades the processions but all of that social media inspired other educators that I know that I'm friends with through social media and and also you know connected in other ways they've reached out to me and said when you come back you've got to help me with my application and it inspires other teachers just by sharing the experience so it's a it's a definite pay it forward I am beyond grateful for the experiences that I've had and and can't truly convey that gratitude or even convey the change in the impact that it's had on me it's going to take a while for me to really process this and put it into words and I think one definite thing is that I owe I owe everyone a thank you but I also owe other educators an opportunity to possibly sharing this as well and so there will be people that I'll be saying you've got to apply you you have to try for this and and it doesn't matter where you're going when I applied I had it Peru was not identified as where you're going it has no I mean there might be places on this planet that you want to go to and by all means that makes sense but I think you could have taken us and plopped us down in any place on this on this globe and we would have walked away with the same experience because you don't know what you don't know and and so I'm I'm absolutely going to be you know your your greatest advocate for for for getting more people to to apply because I know the impact that it's going to have on my classroom I know the impact that's going to have on my students and and it's invaluable it's it's absolutely invaluable you hear so often teachers say they did this because they want to make a change well this makes a change in my being able to make a change and so I really think that that is huge right it's miracle grow on that so getting others to try to to have that experience is really the best way that to to say thank you was to get someone else to come just wonderful wonderful wonderful comments and I just want to say in my position as president CEO of the NEA foundation it is our great honor and privilege to have the opportunity to afford this experience to educators around the country we greatly value it for them and are just very very excited about the cohorts coming and the continuing experience that many others will have you know at the same time as we get ready to close Michael our listeners are not all educators they are all friends and fans of public education we believe and and we also at the NEA foundation think that we all are educators differently or can be educators in our different contexts if not classroom teachers we certainly can participate in the education of children and youth and so with that paradigm I'm wondering now just speaking to the general populace with all that you've talked about in terms of the benefits of global learning how can we all become global learners Michael I think the big takeaway is that as much as traveling somewhere has a huge impact you don't necessarily have to travel to become knowledgeable you know we live in a day and a time now where you can experience a lot without having to physically be somewhere there's some people that physically can't go to places due to different situations so I would say to be open and to explore there's a lot of ways you can explore through the lens of reading and the exploring of cultures I know that I we all do we've all had life experiences that come with a certain amount of of open and honesty and also with biases and to explore those and to challenge yourself to meet people from different backgrounds and to explore them and to become more understanding of what what's going on I think that it doesn't have to be limited to educators obviously I think the world and the bottom line is you didn't change teachers you changed people with this trip and this fellowship you changed human beings and that's what makes us all the same and by changing us and showing us how to be open to embracing a different culture in embracing and finding the similarities not just the difference but also celebrating the similarities and the things that are alike I think that's something that's universal and it transcends all professions all different walks of life if we just listen and open ourselves to meeting others from around the world it's the greatest lesson because like I said it's so there was a great this came from the fellowship this came from the training in DC there was an article in the New York Times that said people were I forget the percentage right it was like 40% less likely to opt for aggressive bombing if they could identify where a place was on a map simply knowing where some country was in the world made you less likely to be so indifferent that you would approve bombing that place and that's just knowing where it was on a map and it changes your emotional and your your your thought process and I think that that is something that all people can do become more knowledgeable and explore the world whether it be from their living rooms or from the with the passport fabulous Michael I know that you have taken time from your busy schedule to be with us today but I think you know wow it's just been incredible to hear about your personal experience and your thoughts and your reflections on the value of global learning and global education I just want to thank you for being with us today unfortunately we do have to wrap now but I don't think you're what you have just said what more could be said you have said it all and we appreciate you very very much well thank you so much for having me and I'm thrilled to be a part of this and I can't thank you enough for for the entire experience thank you again thank you Michael thanks to all of our listeners we hope you've enjoyed this segment with Michael Dunley Celebrated Educator from New Jersey and we look forward to seeing you rather talking with you I'd love to see you too but I look forward to talking with you next month on Up Close with Zaris Need