Middle School
2024-2025 School Year: Middle School
Continue with
Global Competence & Introduce Future Ready
Middle School Goals:
- Continue with Global Competence
- Continue Schoolwide Sustainability
- Continue with Academic Accelerator
Introduce Year Long Future Ready Class at each grade level
Support Year-Long Class with a Robust After-school Ecosytem
After building Global
Competence at the Elementary
School level, we recommend introducing our three character-based, future-ready
competences at the Middle School level – Global Competence, Financial Readiness and Tech/AI Awareness
Recommend: Year-Long,
Sequenced, Future-Ready Class to the Whole School
We believe the best way to build on the global competence programs presented at the elementary school level and introduce our future ready competences is to offer a year-long, future-ready class to Middle School students. This course would meet 1-2 hours a week and include the full spectrum of our Future Ready programs – Global Competence, Financial Readiness, Tech/AI awareness. This program is offered in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade on a sequenced basis.
The One World team will meet with your administrators to help put in place a customized, year-long, schedule detailing the classes to be introduced over the course of the year. As you can see here, the schedule will outline the full range of classes provided throughout the year:
The One World team will provide teacher training throughout the year. We will start with an overview of our future-ready training for the full year as well as train on the first topic: global competence. This first overview is often given to a school’s full slate of teachers so that they now how their students are being impacted by this future-ready and global competence curricula.
One World will provide new teacher training on Financial Readiness and Tech/AI Awareness before each of those series of classes are introduced.
As mentioned above, One World really seeks to differentiate itself with the quality of the ongoing PD training we provide throughout the year. To that end our support team will meet with your schools future-ready team leaders on a bi-weekly basis to check-in and see how things are going, organza the next PD training and to advise them on upcoming global webinars of interest.
Recommend:
Enthusiastic, Supportive Club Eco-System
We recommend, schools support this year-long program with a strong set of after-school activities for each of the competencies being built up:
Global Competence: One World Youth Clubs
Global Competence: Environmental Club
Financial Readiness: Stock Market Clubs
Tech/AI: Tech/AI Clubs
Fin Ready/Tech AI: Entrepreneurs Club
We believe that developing this kind of after-school eco-system helps students interested in a particular area to continue to build their skills outside the classroom. Here in the US all students participate in gym classes while those interested in pursuing sports more actively play on the basketball and other sports teams. The thinking here is the same the after-school eco-system reinforces the year-long classroom activities.
One World recommends an action-oriented, district-wide approach to sustainability education that starts in Elementary School and continues in Middle and High School.
To that end, we strongly suggest that Middle School educators use climate change education to connect their students to solving real world problems using their school as the teaching platform as outlined below.
One World’s Action-Oriented PBL Approach to Climate Change Education
The Paris Agreement made clear that in order to achieve climate change goals the world needs to reduce GHG emissions by 50% by 2030. If schools are going to meet these targets they need to start now by first measuring and then reducing and Roadmapping their GHG emissions.
(New York State has effectively legislated this goal of the Paris Agreement. NYS Schools are required by the NYS 2019 Climate law to reduce their carbon footprint by 40% by 2030.)
One World also urge schools to offset those GHG emissions that cannot be eliminated using the UNFCCC offset network as it is a terrific way to build global competence and achieve global equity:
Visit the United Nations Carbon offset platform.
Most schools have not even begun to measure their carbon footprint let alone put in place measure to reduce their GHG emissions in the short term much less Roadmap to Net Zero in the medium and long term.
Over the course of the last decade One World has worked closely with the secretariat of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to help schools measure, reduce, roadmap and offset their carbon footprint.
To that end we have created a template that points the way forward for schools on this four-step process:
Indeed, we are proud of the fact while working with the UNFCCC we were able to with the Port Chester school district which became the first nationwide climate neutral school district in the United States working with the UNFCCC:
We decided to take that success across Westchester County and have put in place a student-led process that continues to this day impacting not just schools in Westchester but also from as far away as Brazil and China.
Our students have taken on the name Westchester Green County USA (WGC USA) because their goal is to help Westchester County become recognized as an environmental leader where Westchester K12 students are among the most Eco Literate and Eco Collaborative in New York State. WGC USA has adopted Planet Ed’s 4 Part K12 Climate Action plan as you can see from this overview presentation:
Indeed, we are proud of the fact while working with the UNFCCC we were able to with the Port Chester school district which became the first nationwide climate neutral school district in the United States working with the UNFCCC:
The goal with our action-oriented programming is to get students and educators involved in the fight against climate change a fight we cannot win without active school and student involvement given the size of the scholastic footprint as the Planet Ed K12 Climate Action report makes clear:
- With nearly 100,000 K12 public schools sitting on nearly 2 million acres of land the education sector is one of the largest public energy consumers.
- US public schools operate the largest mass transit fleet in the country with over 480,000 public school buses.
- US Schools serve over 7 billion meals each year and generate 530,000 tons of food waste.
Given the importance of climate change as a challenge and as an opportunity to connect students across the world to solving global problems we have created two sets of curricula for Climate Change education.
We recommend that educators start with our action-oriented curricula that includes a range of ways to get students involved in the solution ranging from working with schools across the world on Eco Acts to Measuring and Offsetting their carbon footprint:
We also have a more substantive, comprehensive, sustainable curricula available upon request. Our more comprehensive curricula incorporates much of the data coming from Bill Gates’ book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.
In this interview with Anderson Cooper following the publication of the book, Gates makes clear that solving this challenge will require an unprecedented level of cooperation across all segments of society:
Finally, in Minute 12:40 of the interview, Anderson Cooper commenting on the need to go from 50 billion tons of GHG emissions to Net Zero:
AC: “It just seems overwhelming if every aspect of our daily has to change.”
BG: “It can seem overwhelming… If people think it is easy they are wrong. If people think it is impossible they are wrong. It is possible but it will be the most amazing thing mankind has ever done.
The business consultancy McKinsey tells us that the number one skill set required by employers is the capacity to learn which argues that the number one goal of K12 education needs to be the development of a curiosity and growth mindset as s Friedman points out here:
Annex: For New York State Educators
Annex #1: BRC Commission
Recommendations on Graduation Measures
The BRC unanimously concluded that New York Schools should graduate students who are “academically, life, and future-ready”.
Over the last decade, One World has created a number of classes and programs designed to complement traditional academic offerings to help your student’s become life and future-ready in our 21st-century world. They were clear in their recommendation that financial education is urgently needed.
Recommendation #1: Replace the three diploma types with one diploma with the option to add seals and endorsements.
Recommendation #2: Credit and Program Requirements
The recommendations below “relate to credit and program requirements in potential future graduation measures.”
Diploma credit requirements must include:
- civic responsibility (ethics);
- cultural competence;
- financial literacy
education, including systems, personal finance, and the social-historical context;
- fine and performing arts;
- science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) credit(s); and
- writing, including writing
skills for real-world scenarios.
Currently all three diploma types rely on the same credit requirements. …By including the above recommendations within credit requirements, students would be prepared to
navigate the complexities facing today’s society with essential knowledge and life skills necessary for success in college, career, and civic engagement.
As you can see from the description of the classes we offer, they all fit squarely with the credit and program requirements developed by the BRC.
Annex #2: BRC Commission
Portrait of a Graduate – Start with the End in Mind
We believe implementation After three years of interviews and hard work the BRC Commission came up with the portrait of a graduate that includes these 7 attributes:
- Global Citizen
- Critical Thinker
- Culturally Competent
- An Effective Communicator
- An Innovative Problem Solver
- Literate Across Content Areas
- Socially-Emotionally Competent
We believe this list of attributes is a terrific starting point for schools looking to prepare their students for the opportunities and challenges of our 21st century world. We have also found that many school districts have not developed a portrait or profile for their graduates. We believe it is important to start with the end in mind and let those students entering kindergarten know what to expect for the thirteen years they are in your care.
