We believe that by interacting on a personal level with people from other cultures, students will gain an international perspective and take steps toward becoming empathetic global citizens. We work around the world to connect teachers, artists, classrooms, and students to each other.
How it works
We talk to interested teachers and, based on their students and focus, match them with other teachers and their classrooms in different parts of the world. Our staff works with both instructors to craft a program of study for their students. Students are introduced to one another, share artwork, and foster a dialogue throughout the course of the program. Students are exposed to other cultures via direct contact with other students in another part of the world. Our hope is that this type of interactive, collaborative, and personal learning will be integrated, as the teacher sees fit, into their overall curriculum and goals.
More details
We mostly work with students ages 7-18 years old (K-12). Students create artwork around a few different themes (jointly agreed upon by the two teachers) during the course of the program (semester or year long), which they document and send via the Internet to their partner class in another country. We generally suggest 4 exchanges, each taking approximately 2-3 hours, but this process will vary greatly depending on each class’s interest and constraints. We mostly work with visual art, but we are absolutely not limited to this medium, and we encourage classrooms to exchange anything from writing, music, videos, or whatever else they come up with!