Our Work
We cultivate a global lens for ourselves and our students through Global Competence. Simply put, we promote the acquisition of knowledge and skills to understand & act on global issues.
CGEP’s programs are designed to demonstrate the interconnectedness of people, events, places, and issues. Key themes include human rights, conflict, and resolution, environmental sustainability, migration, peace, and justice. CGEP works with teachers to prepare their students to explore their world, communicate ideas effectively, and take informed action.
What if every valley classroom made just one of these the driving theme for a lesson, unit, or the entire school year?
Current Programming Priorities
Understanding “who” is in our classroom is central to engaging all learners. This continuing series will provide an overview of the context for current and past diasporas, the diverse experience, cultural capital, that comprise the immigrant experience which has enriched our region. Afghan Voices, our first workshop, was enthusiastically received this spring. Next year, we will continue to leverage faculty expertise, refugee, asylum, and immigrant narratives to highlight instructional strategies that will feature Central America and Middle Eastern migration.
There is no time like the present to cultivate teacher agency around one of the most indelible and defining attributes of our society: race, racism, and white supremacy. We will explore what it means to be Black and White in America – whether 1619, 1830, 1919, or 2020. Conversations on race remain unpracticed, while content on the history and contributions of African Americans are too often ignored, superficially taught, or relegated to a day or month. We can’t teach what we don’t know.
Teachers talking with teachers is an opportunity to focus on the understudied experience and contributions of African Americans with time and space to debrief with peers across disciplines/grade levels. While we center our investigation on the African American experience, over time, we will expand our reading lists to examine the experience of Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian and Pacific Islander communities more broadly. The goal of this series is to begin to fill knowledge gaps, maximize teacher engagement, and stimulate respectful, uncensored dialogue. With an ongoing commitment to learn, grow, and translate what's been discovered into engaging lessons.
Virtual Exchange is fun, cross-cultural and it can work from home or school. There are a variety of platforms and formats for a socially distanced school year. Programs are free, cultivate student communication that focuses on mutual understanding and shared experience on contemporary global issues. Be on the lookout for teacher-led programs that feature a variety of options.
*Virtual exchange leverages technology (including cell phones) to bypass geographic boundaries to engage students in cross cultural dialogue and collaboration.
Elementary or K-5
Inspiration
Middle/Secondary
Inspiration
Updated: July 11, 2023