Oak Hills High School Continues Preparing Students for Global Interaction

Oak Hills High School has begun the second phase of a Race to the Top Innovation Grant to work with the Asia Society’s International Studies School Network (ISSN), which will ensure
that students graduate college globally competent and ready to interact as global citizens.

This year, 50 teachers will be trained through the ISSN, which will bring the total number of teachers trained at the high school to 75. In the initial phase, which occurred last school year, 25 teachers were trained to incorporate global competence into their classrooms. The remaining high school teachers will be trained next school year. At that point, the entire curriculum at Oak Hills High School will have a global focus.

There are four pillars to being considered globally competent, which are: Investigate the World – Produce new global knowledge Recognize and Weigh Various Perspectives – Apply cross cultural understanding Communicate Ideas to Diverse Audiences – Connect and collaborate across boundaries Take Action – Enact global solutions.

Teachers are being trained in the “Task Design” model. A “task” is a specifically designed hands-on lesson in which students build their knowledge of the topic by completing specific steps to accomplish the assignment.  Unlike most projects assigned in school, where students learn content and then apply it to a project, these “tasks” require students to learn the content in order to complete the assignment.

Teachers start with a specific learning objective (related to Ohio Content or National Common Core Standards).  Once the learning objective is set, the teachers have to address several elements to ensure that the topic fully engages learning.  Those elements are referred to as SAGE – Student Choice, Authenticity, Global Connection and Exhibition.

Teachers ensure that at least one of the four pillars of global competence is being addressed.  They go through the process of ensuring that the enduring question or questions is truly enduring, and decide what assessments will be used to check progress of the students as they complete the task.   And finally, the teachers decide how the student will show evidence of what they learned.

This is a slight departure from the traditional way that students have learned in high school.  This process is about the students driving learning and building their knowledge while the teacher facilitates growth and education.

“We are excited to roll this out for the students at Oak Hills, and hope that this leads to many conversations between you and your child about what they are learning and how it applies to their real life and the Global World,” said John Stoddard, Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment Administrator.