Teaching with a Global Perspective with James Dittes
Episode 17
Guest James Dittes, a German and English teacher in Gallatin, TN, discusses his work with a global student exchange program that he coordinates. We also discuss the importance of having a global perspective and how this can enhance learning for students.
Episode Notes
Main points of our discussion:
How curiosity led to teaching
Why a global perspective to education is important
How to get started at your school
Links
Students of the World http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/
Fulbright Teacher Exchanges https://www.fulbrightteacherexchanges.org/
Yong Zhao Education in the Age of Globalism http://zhaolearning.com/
Amanda Ripley The Smartest Kids in the World https://www.amandaripley.com/the-smartest-kids-in-the-world
Rutger Bregman Humankind: A Hopeful History https://www.rutgerbregman.com/books/
Transcript
Scott Lee
Global Education is about more than travel. It's about civic engagement and curiosity. That's according to our guest today, James Dittes a German and English teacher at Station Camp High School in Gallatin, Tennessee. James Dittes welcome to the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast.
Jame Dittes
Thank you.
Scott Lee
So tell us a little bit about how you became interested in global education.
Jame Dittes
I, when I was in college, I spent my sophomore year of college studying abroad at a small Christian college near London, near Redding, England. And it was that year that really shaped my life, you know, and just so many different ways. I think, right before I went to England, I changed my major to English. And so had thought about getting some teaching certification just to, you know, to build up to have something to do with that degree. I think I'd always seen myself as a writer, but it was really living overseas, that I really discovered just so many things about myself, and then learn things about my country and about my culture that I just had never had never even occurred to me growing up in the small town of Portland, Tennessee, which even today is a population of about 8000 people. When I returned, it was actually when I was sitting in my dorm room in England, that I realized that almost a call. I mean, I had gone to Christian schools and Christian colleges throughout and I realized that what I wanted to do was I wanted to teach in a public school, I've had a chance to work with these kids from Teach for America, you know, and it's that same drive that same idealism that a lot of college kids get caught up in thinking, Hey, here's a problem. And I hear about this problem a lot. And I'm, I can be the one that fixes it. So I really wanted to stay in England. I loved it there. And I could have finished an English degree there. But I couldn't have gotten a teaching degree there. And so I chose to come back to my undergraduate college in Southern Adventist University, they're near you and Chattanooga. Okay, yeah. And finished up my degree and did my student teaching in a public school and prepare myself to get into public education that way? Well, I really went through two stints as a as a as an educator. My first stint was in Arizona, and I taught there for four years English. And it was a wonderful experience it culturally, it was a it was an experience of just melting into a place that I had no business being okay, this small town boy from Tennessee, go into Arizona, we're in a school where 85% of my students were Latino. And they had a completely different cultural focus and a completely different cultural background. And yet, you know, I was able to kind of use some of these skills that I developed overseas to really integrate myself with them. Now, I left teaching after that, mainly because I wanted to live overseas and I had an opportunity to work in development, international development, was the one country that I thought I was going to go go to, I tried to move to Pakistan six months before they tested a nuclear bomb. And I don't recommend that or moving to Pakistan. But I did get to work with refugees in Albania during the Kosovo crisis. And that sent me into to work later I'd work at Catholic Charities in Nashville, helping to resettle refugees. So this became an issue that was very, very close to me. And eventually, when I did return to teaching, in the back of my mind, I always had these international experiences, you know, and this knowledge that I had learned, really, when I was out of it when I was out of the fishbowl, you know, I learned more in the big ocean than I had in the tiny fishbowl. So, I've taught here at Station Camp High School here, and it's an it's a suburban school near Nashville, Tennessee, taught here for ever since 2004, I sponsored our Model UN club, you know, anything that was International, I went for, right. And then later, I got an opportunity to teach German. And so I began teaching that about 10 years ago now, okay,
Scott Lee
and you teach German and English
Jame Dittes
yeah, I've taught taught, I've taught English throughout my career, German for the last 12 years. And only in the last two years have I taught German more than English. So I now teach this year, I'll teach five classes of German and only one class of English. So it's been a big change for me. But then, in global education, I started to look around for opportunities to travel, you know, because I love travel. And I got associated with a Fulbright Program and the program teachers for global classrooms. And so I apply for that program, and I kind of enhanced you know, I kind of talked about my international experience and my work with refugees and made it in 2014. And that's really what set me you know, on track for for global education. The program included two things one was a was a course on global education, kind of an online course that I went through with my cohort and then the pay off was a two week trip with other teachers to, in my case to the Republic of Georgia. And so I was a kind of a VIP there, I got to live in the capital city for a week and, you know, tour the museums and the cultural activities. And then a colleague of mine and I were actually volunteered in school for a week as well. So I got to see kind of the up close view of, of life in Georgia there as well. Yeah. And so after that, that program ended in 2015. And I was really, at that point, just ready to go, you know, I was looking for any opportunity, I could the fall, the fall of 16. So about a year later, I got contacted by a teacher in Germany, and she was looking for an exchange through the GAPP [German American Partnership Program] program, which is a long time established program, there are programs all around Tennessee, and all around the United States. And I just really saw this as to me, the iron was hot, I wanted it bad. And so, you know, talk to my administrator course, by this point, you know, he and I have worked together for many years. I mean, by that point, 13 or 14 years, so you knew he knew me well enough to know if he could trust me with a with an exchange like that. And that's, that's really where I am now. I run an exchange every summer I invited.
Scott Lee
Yeah, I was about to say if you could tell us just a little bit more about how the what the exchange program looks like, obviously, this year with COVID-19. It's probably on hold or suspended. Well, what has it looked like in the past and we presume, will again soon?
Jame Dittes
Well, I love the GAPP program, because it's a school to school exchange, you know, teachers do get a lot of opportunities to travel. There's a lot of travel companies that recruit teachers to lead trips to Europe or Asia, but the gap program is a school to school exchange. So the school that I am partnered with is in a city called Ingelheim am Rhine. It's about 40 minutes west of Frankfurt, Germany, right on the Rhine River. And as a match, it's just a perfect match. I mean, my my community is a community of about 30,000 on the Cumberland River outside of Nashville Ingelheim is very similar. I couldn't pick a better German town, but they will send their students over here for about three weeks every year around Easter, and the kids that are in the program, their families will host the German kids for three weeks, the Germans will come to school with the kids every day and go to our classes. They'll travel with the families, but right, the focus of the program is very much on just living in the United States,
Scott Lee
right? Alright. So they're not staying in a hotel and just coming to your school.
Jame Dittes
No, they're staying in a room and the family's house. And then the families organize parties for them, they might take them just to here in Tennessee, they might take them to Gatlinburg or Memphis, you know, just someplace within driving distance to show them this part of the United States. And then after school gets out in May, they're still in classes in Germany. And so I'll take my my group, it's a group of about 16, I'll take them to Germany, they live with the same host families live with the same kids just get to experience Germany. And we were able to do that in 18 in 2018, and 19. And then last year, this summer, of course, we were planning to we had the matches all together. And then of course, the program was aborted about about four weeks before they would have arrived. So
Scott Lee
right.
Jame Dittes
It was it was tough. But and, you know, keep people are asking me if we go next year, and I've I've kind of set a deadline of January, if something miraculously opens up by January, hey, I'm diving in and taking the group. But again, we haven't, I don't think any prediction about COVID has has come true,
Scott Lee
it's difficult to to even know what to even think. And that's I know that that's got to be tough for the the students that that are involved in doing this.
Jame Dittes
Here's the where the the training and global education pays off. And again, I really give a lot of credit to the Fulbright program into IREX, which is the agency that that they work with. But but so what do you do when you can't you know, is there anything else to global education than traveling to exotic places? Right.
Scott Lee
And, and that's one of that's, that's one of the things that, you know, that I wonder about is, you know, if a school can't afford to do this, and I don't know how your your program is funded, you know, a lot of schools may not be able to do quite so much travel. Yeah. Do you have any ideas for folks that might be in that spot?
Jame Dittes
Well, for one, just about the travel, ours is completely family funded. So I before each exchange of our book, you know, I'll book the plane tickets and figure it out, give them give the families a general estimate of the costs. And then you know, they they choose to to go in, we have a few fundraisers, but it is entirely family funded. Another trick about organizing travel is just a planet far enough in advance. And so I typically will start in August and have kids signed up by September, and then they have from September to May to raise the money. Last year, we were going to charge 1700 dollars, most of that was airfare but then we also have paid for a week. But what I would say for schools that just aren't maybe they live there too far away from an airport is that the key to global education is more than travel is to globalize everything. And that that begins with the objectives. What are the objectives of your German class in your Spanish class? And then how do I make those objectives global? And so one project that I did when I was taking the online course was, I realized that I needed my students to speak German and their final exam. And so I thought, well, let's start up a pen pal program, the kids will have a pen pal from another country. And then over the course of the semester, they'll learn what their name is, what classes they take at school, where they live, you know, these things that we're teaching them how to ask for and speak about in German. And then their final exam would be a five minute presentation on their pen pal, you know, using photos and maps and stuff like that. I did that initially, with a site called students of the world dot info. I think it's based out of France. But that's where kids from all over sign up and can get pen pals, I have a pen pal that I signed up with six years ago. And we still correspond every month. But then later, when I got the school, the school program, then it became easier. Now I've got a teacher in Germany, who's recruiting kids and saying, hey, you need to write a letter to, you know, in Tennessee. And so I've that's actually where I've been working this year, even in my English class. You know, it dawned on me last year that I really needed to make my English class more international. So this, I always begin the class with an essay, what is an American, I have a unit where we talk about different views of America and things like that. And so this year, I assigned the same essay, but I told them, I'm taking your essay, and I'm going to send it to Germany, and I'm going to let these German kids read what what you think an American is. And immediately, I've got more of the kids aren't just writing an essay for their English teacher, they know that someone else is going to read it. And the goal is that the Germans will actually now write them back with questions that they have about the United States. And that'll give me a chance to assign an argumentative essay. There you go. Yeah. So I'll have the German kids assign the essay instead of me, and my students will want to write it.
Scott Lee
Right? Yeah, there you go. That's great.
Jame Dittes
The German teacher wrote, We texted me this week, and was reading my students essays, because I sent them out. Several of my students had written about, you know, Black Lives Matter was something that they thought really carefully about. And, you know, imagine, you know, being a German, a Brit, or Japanese seeing this stuff on the news. I mean, this stuff is not just, you know, even demonstrations are happening all over the world about it. And there's such an interest. And so for a German to get a chance to talk to an American kid to an American, an American, African American kid, about what is it like for you there? I mean, what is it really like, you know, because we all know that the media, we all have to filter our media, and we all know that, you know, the most authentic voices are the ones that are actually experiencing it not written not. So here's a really great chance to kind of, you know, link these two, two sides. I'm really, I'm just so excited about this program.
Scott Lee
That's really good. And I you know, I love the idea of having that exchange, no matter who in your English classes as well, as part of it my travels, you I guess it comes back to I'm always curious about people like you who are do bilingual teaching what your thoughts are about the way we teach foreign languages in the US in the first place. And I got a follow up about foreign cultures and geography, you'll one of the things that I've noticed, traveling, also is that everybody I've met in Britain, where they speak English also speaks either German, Spanish, French, often two or three different other languages. Here in America, unless you have a family member who is an immigrant, that just doesn't happen very much. And I wonder what your thoughts are about the way we teach foreign language in the US, you know, should it be earlier? Should it be elementary as well?
Jame Dittes
Well, that's a really good question. I mean, I'll just say that, for me, my motivation for learning a foreign language really was more just historical, you know, my family had migrated from Germany at one time and like all Americans, I was kind of curious about, hey, why did they come here? Where did they leave? That's not a very strong reason to learn. learn another language. But that was what what started me on it. I think that language is taught best here in America in the immersion programs. You know, I've heard of great Chinese immersion programs, Spanish Immersion programs. We have German immersion programs in the US as well. And in an immersion program, it's sink or swim, you know, you have to learn it. One of the the disadvantages that we have with learning foreign language here in the United States, is that for many parents, and of course, I think parents drive demand for language learning. You know, in the younger grades, you know, language is is, you know, it's a worthless ticket almost have a huge, huge country, you know, and you can drive for 13 hours and get out of your car and someone's still going to speak English
Scott Lee
well, times I've been to Mexico, everybody, everybody I meet speaks English also.
Jame Dittes
And, you know, I, it's not a worthless ticket I want to emphasize but, you know, imagine living in Belgium, just for an example, you know, you're half hour away from me, you may live on the same street as a Dutch speaker, a French speaker, a German speaker and an English speaker. So you grow up, just immersed in that and with that need to to learn the language. So here is as a foreign language teacher myself, especially teaching something that's not you know, most high school kids are going to take Spanish, okay, right, you're going to see it at a Mexican restaurant,
Scott Lee
it definitely is the most utilitarian language to learn if you're, you know, if you're an American,
Jame Dittes
yeah. So I find, I find that the, in my case, the exchange drives the demand, okay? Once I had a program where I could tell kids, you're going to go to Germany and live there for three weeks, and you're going to make friends with a German person, my, my, the number of kids in my class almost doubled. I mean, just within a year of that, and parents are aware of this, and, you know, all of us, I mean, I speak as a, everything I do as a teacher is stems from being a dad who wants to provide opportunities for my kids, right. But once that was was was available, that's when we, that's when I really started to see, you know, demand go up. And it's not just for foreign languages, but you know, have a chemistry program, you know, if you have access to a university, or, you know, if you're able to exchange with a with a corporation, maybe that's in your town, that's going to drive demand for for people to do that. So I really do think that I don't know, I just see exchanges as really the heartbeat of foreign language and learning, not just my classroom, but for many, many classrooms.
Scott Lee
Yeah, cuz the other thing of it, you know, before we got started, we were sharing a couple stories about travel also, and so many Americans do not really even have the opportunity or the need, even to get a passport. I sometimes get a little bit concerned that that sort of feeds this idea that, you know, as Americans we have that we're different. And I don't want to get into your discussion about American exceptionalism or not. But I do think sometimes that there's such a lack of, of exchange between Americans and people anywhere else around the world. And I worry, you know, there's just not enough opportunity for students, and I try my mind to figure out how to solve the problem. And I just end up banging my head against the wall, because I can't think of enough ways. So right. Do you run into that, too?
Jame Dittes
Yeah. I it's interesting when I was in DC, for for convention with teachers for global classrooms, when I was when I was in the program, they had a representative from the State Department there who did a q&a session, I asked her, I said, you know, when I think about this program, and you sending me to the Republic of Georgia, for example, or bringing teachers to Washington, DC, by my estimate, I didn't tell her this, but they had spent about $10,000 per teacher, you know, this cohort, and this was public money. I mean, this is this the US State Department, this is on their budget every year. And I said, Why? What are what are you getting from this? This isn't a gift, nothing, no money is a gift. And she said, you know, we see this as an investment. There are people in China that want to buy products, there are people in India who want to provide services, and if an American is has the language ability, and the cultural sensitivity to go out and get that money, and that's money that comes back into our country back into our economy. It doesn't matter where you are, whether you're Chattanooga, or Portland, OR Gallatin, or, you know, Boise, Idaho, earlier, you are going to have and I do have some incredible exchanges, by the way, you're going to profit from having a global sensitivity, especially in this connected world that we have. I mean, we ignore the world at our economic peril,
Scott Lee
right. We're part of those struggles. Yeah, we ignore the rest of the world at our peril, and our economic peril, but also maybe our cultural peril too.
Jame Dittes
Well, one of the things that the the COVID crisis this year has really allowed us to do like in early in our history, we saw states as kind of the laboratory of democracy for this expression that, you know, if Ohio tries something, and it works, then Tennessee can copy it or warn you Oh, yeah. But now in a global context, we can look at countries that that manage the COVID crisis very, very effectively, you know, countries where people are now walking around without masks or going nice ballgames. You know, and so when I talk to people about it, it's very difficult to talk about this issue because it has become so politicized and it will continue to be so you know, until until the election, but I always ask them, how did how did Korea do it? You know, or how did you do it? I just want to know how they did. I don't know who their president is, and what party he is for I, you know, I want to find out what worked. And I think when we look at it in that way and more kind of a humble global way, we can say, hey, these are some things that I'll just say, Italy, did, you know to overcome, or these are some practices in Spain. So having this this global focus, you know, allows you to cut through a lot of the silliness is kind of blinding, you know, us here in United States right now to react to facts or to things to solutions that have been tested or that have been experimented with, you know, in other countries and economically as well, you know, trade or manufacturing, a labor relations. You know, there are countries all over the world welfare, there are countries all the world that have been experimenting with this and trying to find the right balance, you know, between between them, and I don't know that any one country is should who should just copy but right. Yeah, so get those ideas.
Scott Lee
You know, that's a great way to look at it. So if our any of our colleagues are looking for a place to get started, what are some resources you could suggest
Jame Dittes
for teachers, I just really can. Fulbright has a number of really great programs. I mean, their top shelf program to me is they have a program where they'll pay you to go to another country in research, you know, for six months, six months to a year, but they also have a lot of really great short term programs as well. I did the Fulbright teachers for global classrooms. They also have short term, the Fulbright Hays fellowship is another really good one that I'd recommend for elementary school teachers just looking around at you know, there's some really good writers that are writing about global education as well. It's a couple books that I that I'd recommend. One would be the writer, Yong Zhao, who's a professor at the University of Oregon [now at University of Kansas and Melbourne Graduate School of Education]. He's written several really fascinating books. And I've read a couple of them about American education system and how it compares for better or worse. Another really good one, this is this has been out for a while, but it's Amanda Ripley's, The Smartest Kids in the World. And she looked at American exchange students in Finland, Korea, and one other European country, I think it was Germany, but she just really did a good job of providing facts and also the context, looking at these cultures through the experience of the other kids. But one of my favorite books of the summer was Humankind by Rutger Bregman, which is more of a sociological book, but it really does. It envisions a world where we just assume people want the best instead of trying to regiment them or, you know, assuming that they're out to get us maybe assume that they just want the same things that we do. But I would just say, you know, to like you, it begins with travel, you know, right. And travel begins with curiosity, you know,
Scott Lee
so and as teachers, we search for the truth, we our profession, I don't think does enough to encourage curiosity sometimes.
Jame Dittes
No, you're absolutely right.
Scott Lee
So yeah, that's, it's interesting that you that you bring that up.
Jame Dittes
Well, I think about myself as a young man in that dorm room. And in England, you know, when I really made my decision of where I wanted to teach and how I wanted to teach, young teachers are so idealistic. I mean, they come into the profession, with so much energy and so many ideals. And it's a real rude awakening, you know, that the minute you get a piece of chalk in your hand, you know, you're the part of the problem that you start with one set of learning. And two, you know, three years later, they re re re reform education, and suddenly your your ideas are old fashioned. And so there are a lot of challenges to being a young teacher. And that's again, where the curiosity, I look for opportunities, I don't wait for someone to tell me Oh, we're going to go now in this global direction. I'll jump in the global direction and see where the rest of the herd is going later.
Scott Lee
Great. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We definitely will make sure to include on the website, some of the links that you suggested and the books as well. Once again, James Dittes, thank you very much for joining us today.
Jame Dittes
Welcome. Thanks for inviting me on.
Scott Lee
This has been episode number 17. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is hosted and produced by R. Scott Lee, who retains copyright. We encourage diverse opinions. However, opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the producer partners or underwriters. Guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did guest pay to appear. Transcripts are available following podcast publication at our website, thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com. Sponsorship opportunities, or other inquiries may also be made on the contact page at our website thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com. Please follow the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast on twitter @drrscottlee.
