Expanding Student Perspectives: How One Independent School is Using Real-World Experiences with Far Away Friends to Connect with Other Cultures
In this guest blog post, Director of Collaborative Learning and Educational Partnerships at the Out-Of-Door Academy, Camela Giraud, discusses the impact of our Schools for Schools program on her students.
As an independent school teacher, I balance my time at work in many roles. I am a classroom teacher, the director of our school’s community service program, and the faculty advisor for a long-standing Global Citizens Club in our Upper School. Of all that I do on our campus, the effort I value most is engaging students emotionally through storytelling and experiences that expand their world view and connect them with other people. I strive for impact.
Our school has had a relationship with Far Away Friends for years. In our first year as a school partner, we invited FAF to present about their work in an assembly we hoped would inspire confidence in our students to be change makers. Our students sat spellbound as US-based founder, Jayme Ward, told of her experiences first as a high school club leader then as the director of the visionary transnational nonprofit that she helped to establish in rural Uganda. Jayme was inspiring; after the assembly, students came to learn more from the FAF team who set up a table in our Student Center for the day. The Global Citizens club was central in hosting FAF. The day after their visit the club organized an all-school fundraiser support FAF’s Global Leaders Primary School in purchasing school desks so students could socially distance in the cautious post height-of-pandemic return to school. The fundraiser, a dress down day (a day without uniforms) raised over $2000.
After FAF left that year, several faculty felt that the Far Away Friends story had relevance beyond an inspirational assembly. We felt their work represented so much of our curriculum in living form, the shape of a small team of visionaries not much older than our students. Faculty mobilized to identify courses that could benefit from the many levels of expertise and perspective of Far Away Friends. When we reached out to FAF to design a deep dive visit into specific divisions and classes, they could not have been more excited to shape a day-long multidisciplinary approach to share with our students. We were thrilled for a full day immersion with the US-based executive team.
After two assemblies, one at the Middle School and another with our Upper School, in which Jayme and Kaitlyn (FAF Operations Director) shared the group’s origin story and vision for the future, classroom visits began. For our Middle School English classes, Jayme and Kaitlyn designed a lesson focused on the human story of young people living in Uganda. They shared details about a day-in-the-life of teens of the same age. They connected our students on topics ranging from the school day experience, to housing, food, friends, athletics, and rural life. In our Upper School, the classroom visits were more closely tied to specific content. For a course on international studies, they prepared a presentation on do-no-harm development in which they spoke of trends in voluntourism and the community- partnerships model that they espouse. For a course in public speaking, founder Jayme Ward shared with students how she prepares for specific audiences, how she uses storytelling to engage an audience emotionally in their work. In a course on the history of East Africa, the team spoke of topics such as the impact of colonial rule and managing current interests from countries like China and Russia. For a course in entrepreneurship, Jayme presented a model of social entrepreneurship and the intricacies of funding their dream for the Ugandan district they serve.
This winter, a small group of faculty are again visioning our future with FAF as a school partner. We hope to continue a deepening of our engagement with FAF. We dream of a day when our teachers might be able to engage in a teacher exchange. Our Lower School teachers could immerse themselves at Global Leaders Primary and teachers from GLP could experience classroom leadership on our campus. We imagine a day when we arrange host families in our community to invite a group of students into our community and classrooms. For our upper classmen, we are imagining a small group of students traveling with FAF on an immersion trip.
Far beyond a nonprofit that is exclusively focused on fundraising, Far Away Friends continues to be true to its original purpose: establish real connections between people in order to make the world more connected, equitable, and aware.
The potential for change in the world is palpable to all of us. Most importantly, we see our students beginning to contemplate and connect to the world differently. Like the dreams of FAF for the district of Amolatar, we also dream of creating high-impact learning experiences for our students, inspiring in them the belief that anything is possible.
I cannot recommend a school partnership with Far Away Friends more enthusiastically.