Global Learning Should Be a Promise, Not a Privilege: Reflections from Our #ISTElive Panel
Yesterday at ISTE, I had the pleasure of facilitating a panel called Global Learning for an Open World with three thoughtful and inspiring colleagues: Craig C. Martin, Julie Meltzer, Isabella Liu, and me, Lucy Gray.
Our goal was simple but urgent: to revive the conversation about why global learning matters and how we can move it from a one-off project into something more deeply woven into classrooms, schools, and systems.
At a conference filled with powerful conversations about AI, technology, leadership, and innovation, we wanted to make the case that global learning belongs right in the center of those conversations. It is not separate from edtech. It is not separate from curriculum. It is not separate from school culture or equity. Global learning is a lens through which students can investigate the world, understand multiple perspectives, communicate ideas, and take meaningful action.
Global learning is not just a unit, a food festival, a special trip, or an enrichment opportunity for a small group of students. It is a way of helping young people understand the world they are inheriting and their own capacity to contribute to it.
Why Global Learning Matters Now
Students today are growing up in a world shaped by climate change, migration, technological disruption, civic uncertainty, global health challenges, and increasingly complex forms of work and communication. They need more than traditional academic skills. They need curiosity, empathy, critical thinking, digital fluency, cross-cultural understanding, creativity, and an entrepreneurial mindset.
The pandemic reminded us how interconnected we are. AI is now reminding us that the future of learning and work will require distinctly human capacities: judgment, compassion, collaboration, ethical reasoning, and the ability to learn continuously.
Global learning helps students build those capacities. It gives them opportunities to explore real issues, connect with others, examine systems, understand local and global relationships, and see themselves as people who can act with purpose.
That is why this conversation feels especially important right now. In recent years, global learning has sometimes taken a backseat in U.S. education conversations. Other topics have understandably moved to the foreground: AI, learning recovery, political polarization, school safety, staffing, assessment, and the daily realities of overwhelmed educators. But global learning is not a competing priority. It is a way to bring many of those priorities together in a more coherent and human-centered way.
If we want students to become thoughtful participants in a complex world, global learning cannot be treated as optional.
Global Learning Must Not Become a Velvet Rope
One of the most powerful moments in our ISTE panel came from Craig C. Martin, who challenged us to look honestly at who gets access to global learning opportunities and who does not.
Craig reminded us that exposure is not the same as transformation. A student can travel internationally and still never examine power, culture, identity, or systems. A student can participate in a global project and still not develop deeper intercultural understanding. A school can proudly offer IB programs, travel opportunities, Model UN, dual language pathways, service learning, or international partnerships and still quietly reproduce inequity.
His challenge was clear: do not let global learning become a velvet rope.
That phrase stayed with me because it names something many of us have seen. Too often, the students who already have the most access get even more access. They are the ones encouraged to apply, nominated for leadership programs, invited into advanced pathways, supported by families who know how to navigate the system, or perceived as “ready” for rigorous global opportunities. Meanwhile, students who might benefit most from identity-affirming, perspective-expanding, globally connected learning may be left outside the door.
Craig pushed us to ask better questions. Who is participating? Who is missing? Which students are seen as “travel ready,” “IB ready,” “advanced,” or “appropriate” for global opportunities? Which families know these pathways exist? Which students are quietly discouraged because of disability, language background, income, race, confidence, immigration status, foster care experience, or adults’ assumptions about their readiness?
If global learning is truly about investigating the world, recognizing perspectives, communicating ideas, and taking action, then it cannot be reserved for a narrow group of students. It has to be intentionally designed into the culture and systems of a school.
That means looking at access, advising, family communication, professional learning, curriculum, student supports, and the assumptions adults bring to the work. It also means making sure students see their own languages, cultures, identities, and communities as globally significant, not as something separate from “the world.”
Craig’s point was not just that global learning should be more inclusive. It was that global learning loses its integrity when it is not inclusive.
Global learning should be a promise, not a privilege.
From Classroom Windows to Real-World Action
Isabella Liu, a high school chemistry and math teacher from Toronto and an Apple Distinguished Educator, shared how global learning comes alive when teachers use their own learning experiences as bridges for students.
She described beginning her teaching career in China, where she worked in a school that brought together Canadian, Australian, British, and American curriculum pathways. That experience helped her see that while curriculum standards may vary across countries, the deeper goals of learning often overlap. In science and math especially, inquiry can become a natural bridge across contexts.
Isabella shared how her professional learning experiences with National Geographic and the Explorers Club helped her bring global issues back into her local classroom. After participating in an expedition to the Galápagos, where she studied conservation and water quality alongside naturalists, she created a project called With Great Lakes Come Great Responsibility.
In that project, her students used publicly available water quality data from the Toronto area, cleaned and analyzed the data, looked for trends, connected those trends to local environmental conditions, and presented their findings in a student water symposium.
This is exactly the kind of learning students need more of. It connects the global to the local. It turns abstract science into meaningful inquiry. It helps students move from anxiety about the future to agency in the present.
Isabella also named something many educators are seeing in their students: eco-anxiety and climate anxiety. Students are learning about enormous problems, but they do not always feel they have the tools to respond. Global learning can help change that. It can give students structured ways to investigate, understand, collaborate, and act.
Her work reminds us that classrooms can serve as windows, mirrors, and sliding doors, but teachers often serve as the bridge between the classroom and the world. When students see their teachers as learners, explorers, and question-askers, they are more likely to see themselves that way too.
From Inquiry to Solutionary Action
Julie Meltzer from the Institute for Humane Education helped us think about how schools can move students from awareness to action. She shared the Institute’s solutionary framework, which supports students in identifying meaningful problems, investigating root causes, understanding systems, considering multiple perspectives, developing solutions, taking action, and reflecting on impact.
Julie posed a foundational question: What is the purpose of school?
If we say we want students to graduate as compassionate, capable, thoughtful, and engaged people, then they need repeated opportunities to practice those capacities. They need to work on problems that matter. They need to understand that action is not something done to others, but something done with others.
Julie shared examples of students examining issues such as food access, climate change, inequitable counseling, and community challenges. She emphasized that students often do not shy away from hard problems when they have real voice and choice. In fact, they frequently choose issues that are deeply meaningful to them.
The solutionary approach helps students avoid two common traps: staying in inquiry forever without acting, or jumping too quickly to shallow action without understanding the problem. Instead, students learn to investigate deeply, think systemically, act compassionately, and evaluate what will do the most good and least harm for people, animals, and the environment.
That combination of inquiry, systems thinking, compassion, and action is at the heart of global learning.
Designing for Language, Access, and Participation
During the conversation, an audience member asked an important question about language barriers in global projects. This is a real challenge, and it is also an area where technology is opening new possibilities.
We talked about translation supports, captions, multilingual documentation, AI translation tools, and the importance of designing global projects with language access in mind from the beginning. Julie noted that language learning itself can become part of the global learning experience when students use another language to investigate, collaborate, and present to authentic audiences. Isabella shared how, early in her teaching career, she relied on local teachers and translated resources to make science and math more accessible to multilingual learners.
The larger point is this: language should not be treated as a barrier that prevents global learning. It should be treated as part of the design challenge. Captions, translated materials, multilingual collaboration, and thoughtful use of AI can all help more students participate meaningfully.
This is another place where Craig’s equity frame matters. If we say we want globally connected learning, then we have to design for the students who are actually in our classrooms. That includes multilingual learners, students with disabilities, students with limited access to travel, students who may not yet see themselves as “global,” and students whose own communities are too often overlooked in global education conversations.
Global learning does not begin somewhere far away. It begins with the students in front of us and the communities they call home.
Technology Can Help, But It Is Not the Point
Because we were at ISTE, technology was naturally part of the conversation. Technology can make global learning more possible. It can help students connect across geography, translate across languages, collaborate asynchronously, share media, analyze data, build projects, and access perspectives that would otherwise be out of reach.
But the tools are not the point.
The point is the learning. The point is the relationship. The point is the question students are investigating, the perspectives they are encountering, the assumptions they are examining, and the actions they are preparing to take.
AI, video conferencing, collaborative documents, Padlet, translation tools, data sets, digital storytelling platforms, and lesson planning apps can all support global learning. But they need to be used in service of something bigger: helping students become more curious, more connected, more discerning, more compassionate, and more capable of participating in the world.
That is where global learning and digital citizenship meet. Students need real contexts in which to practice ethical communication, perspective-taking, media literacy, collaboration, and responsible use of technology. Global learning gives them those contexts.
Resources from the Session
We created a shared Padlet with slides, tools, examples, action guides, and next-step resources. You can access it here:
Global Learning for an Open World Padlet
The presentation slides are available here:
Global Learning for an Open World Presentation Slides
I also shared two resources I’ve been developing to support educators who want practical entry points into global learning.
The first is my Global Learning Google NotebookLM, a curated collection of global education resources that can be used as a study guide, planning support, and idea generator:
Global Learning Google NotebookLM
The second is GlobeClass Spark, a lesson planning app I created to help educators design global learning experiences. Teachers can enter a topic, grade band, standards, SDG connections, lesson model preferences, and additional context, then generate and refine a lesson plan:
I also invited participants to join us for the upcoming GLOW Conference: Global Learning for an Open World, which takes place virtually during International Education Week. GLOW continues the spirit of the former Global Education Conference and brings together educators, students, organizations, and leaders who care about globally connected teaching and learning.
Let’s Bring Global Back
One of my biggest takeaways from the session is that global learning has faded from the center of many education conversations in recent years. It is time to bring it back.
Not as an add-on. Not as a luxury. Not as something reserved for students who already have access to the most opportunities.
Global learning belongs in everyday classrooms. It belongs in science, math, social studies, language arts, world languages, the arts, libraries, advisory programs, service learning, career pathways, and schoolwide culture. It belongs in conversations about AI and digital citizenship. It belongs in conversations about equity and leadership. It belongs in every school that wants students to understand the world and their place in it.
Our students deserve learning experiences that help them see beyond themselves, connect across differences, ask better questions, and act with care. They deserve to know that their own communities are globally significant and that they have something to contribute.
Craig’s challenge gives us the right standard: global learning should not become a velvet rope. It should be a promise.
Thank you to everyone who joined us at ISTE, contributed to the Padlet, asked questions, and continues to champion global learning. Let’s keep building the bridges our students need.