This program is a strand within Rutland High School's (Rutland, VT) course offerings and provides students with interdisciplinary, globally focused classes. In this concentration, students have many opportunities to extend their awareness of global topics and issues, and develop knowledge and skills to become more informed, engaged, and socially responsible citizens who embrace cultural diversity. Starting with the class of 2015, students can elect to participate in this program.
Mission
In the Global Studies concentration, students learn and grapple with topics, ideas, and events that affect the world. Students have the opportunity to investigate the world, recognize different perspectives, communicate ideas, and take action based on their ideas. In doing this work, students will become active globally engaged citizens.
Why Global Studies?
From sports to economics, politics to culture, globalization has changed the world drastically in the last decade. Now, students video chat with friends in Africa and learn about events as they unfold on social media. As the world has become linked through technology, travel, and business, the jobs that students find after graduation will be impacted by this interconnected and related world. The changing world offers students enormous opportunities. The Global Studies Concentration offers students a chance to communicate to many different audiences and people, analyze trends across data, and understand multiple cultures.
This program affords students a thematically focused, interdisciplinary high school course load, through which they can see connections among classes, both in terms of subject matter and skill set. Since experience in life is integrated, these connections are essential for all students as they move forward in college and work. Program topics and skills also build on and reinforce one another, rendering greater growth in students’ knowledge and skills.
Further, the interdisciplinary approach allows students to see global issues from multiple perspectives. Exposed to more than just cursory coverage of a topic in one class, participating students benefit from the extended time and focus on global issues in multiple classes, enabling them to gain a deeper understanding of today’s complex opportunities and problems facing all communities – both local and global.
Students will emerge from this program ready for the rigors of college and work. They will be able to understand, communicate, and collaborate with other people, across cultures, cities, and countries. The program gives students a competitive advantage when applying to college and for jobs, for they will be able to speak about the world in ways most students will not.
Participating students are empowered to move beyond just studying global issues. Asked to consider how to solve problems and engage in the issues, they will gain a long-lasting learning that will impact their local, regional, and global communities. In fact, a recent study in the UK demonstrated that people who learned about global issues in school were two times more likely to take action to help solve these issues, rather than just be overwhelmed by them. By studying global issues in this context, students will become active participants in their local and global communities, with a sense of citizenship in both.
This program affords students a thematically focused, interdisciplinary high school course load, through which they can see connections among classes, both in terms of subject matter and skill set. Since experience in life is integrated, these connections are essential for all students as they move forward in college and work. Program topics and skills also build on and reinforce one another, rendering greater growth in students’ knowledge and skills.
Further, the interdisciplinary approach allows students to see global issues from multiple perspectives. Exposed to more than just cursory coverage of a topic in one class, participating students benefit from the extended time and focus on global issues in multiple classes, enabling them to gain a deeper understanding of today’s complex opportunities and problems facing all communities – both local and global.
Students will emerge from this program ready for the rigors of college and work. They will be able to understand, communicate, and collaborate with other people, across cultures, cities, and countries. The program gives students a competitive advantage when applying to college and for jobs, for they will be able to speak about the world in ways most students will not.
Participating students are empowered to move beyond just studying global issues. Asked to consider how to solve problems and engage in the issues, they will gain a long-lasting learning that will impact their local, regional, and global communities. In fact, a recent study in the UK demonstrated that people who learned about global issues in school were two times more likely to take action to help solve these issues, rather than just be overwhelmed by them. By studying global issues in this context, students will become active participants in their local and global communities, with a sense of citizenship in both.
