Dear Families,

As the conclusion of our inaugural year gets closer, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the incredible journey our students have made through EF Academy Pasadena's  signature Global Leadership program. In preparation for our first Global Leadership Symposium on May 26th, we are excited to look back at how our students progressed through this program. Global Leadership (GL) prepares the next generation of empowered changemakers to meet the challenges of the 21st century by designing sophisticated solutions to address local and global issues aligned with one of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. 

Students learn best when they are engaged in relevant and important issues that impact their communities and the world. Likewise, we believe that students’ lived experiences and perspectives are assets that can be leveraged in everyday learning. Living and learning in an international community provides a unique opportunity for our students to fully grasp their shared responsibility to cultivate a more humane, sustainable, and peaceful world. Global Leadership provides students and teachers with dedicated time, space, and resources to explore, collaborate, and grow as global citizens together. Students seek to make the world a better place by engaging in issues of personal and global importance. In pursuit of this, each student this year has made progress toward the following Global Leadership competencies:

1. Identifying what one wants to learn or accomplish and why it is important to oneself. 

2. Seeking resources that will provide helpful support. 

3. Investigating the true needs and concerns of a community.

4. Collaborating and finding synergy in working with others, actioning team goals. 

Our very first class in GL began with a logo challenge where students had to start working with each other right away. In just a single class period, teams had to design a logo that meaningfully represented their initial understanding of what it meant to be a global citizen, global innovator, or global entrepreneur. The collaborative and competitive nature of our students quickly emerged as Cena was bustling with all 119 of our students pulling their ideas together. This activity set the tone for the rest of the quarter, which continued with students exploring their leadership styles, sharing and establishing cultural norms, and exploring the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

As the first quarter of school came to a close, GL groups entered the “empathize” stage of the design thinking process, where they began to identify something that was missing, something that could be improved, or something they wished their community had to make life better for others. In doing so, students proposed an innovative idea that directly and positively impacted a community, using one of the SDGs as a guide for their design. Working in collaboration with their group members, teams pitched their ideas to the “Sharks,” community members from around campus, who in turn gave teams meaningful feedback to adjust their project goals and take action throughout the rest of the year.

We've seen a lot of progress in project development since those initial presentations back in October. While some project concepts have endured, like a student mentorship group called “Big Sib” or a reef-safe sunscreen group called “Asé Sunscreen,” other students realized that their original project ideas didn’t quite align with their passions and interests. The first semester of school concluded with a Global Leadership Fair, where students were encouraged to reflect on what they cared about and why. Through this experience, teams could “choose their own adventure,” where students could (1) share their progress with their original ideas, (2) recruit new team members to fill identified roles, or (3) market their own individual skills to others to join a brand new team. Through this experience, students had to clearly articulate their skills, interests, and motivations in a communal setting. Iterative student reflection has been an important piece of the design thinking process and largely contributes to the success we’re seeing from our GL groups now at the end of the year.

Students and faculty returned from winter break rejuvenated and excited to make strides toward taking action on their GL projects. At this point in the year, GL groups were paired with faculty mentors and coaches whose expertise more closely aligned with the goals of our twenty different student groups. Many groups were ready to move beyond empathizing and defining identified challenges related to the SDGs, and progress to the ideating and prototyping phases of the design thinking process. As such, all twenty of our GL groups had the opportunity to formally articulate their ideas and needs to the Global Leadership Committee to share their progress and outline their action plans for the remainder of the year. The range of topic ideas and action plans was beyond impressive. Check out some highlighted GL groups at the bottom of this newsletter!

We’re excited to announce that all of the work from this year in GL will be showcased in our Global Leadership Symposium on May 26th. This will be an opportunity to hear from each of our student groups about their Global Leadership projects. Projects range from education and advocacy campaigns, to innovating solutions to pressing problems, and developing new inventions and products. In this final interactive exhibition of learning, students will have the opportunity to showcase their work to local community members, Pasadena government officials, and surrounding middle school students and teachers. We would also like to extend an invitation to any friends or family living or visiting Pasadena at the end of our school year to attend the Global Leadership Symposium. We’re so proud of the work that these students have done this year, and we can’t wait to have these teams leading the community through engaging exhibits, educational lessons, and outdoor activities. If you’d like to attend, please email our Head of Admissions, Bobbie Jo Dobbs, at [email protected]. We hope to see you there!

Finally, we’d like to take a moment to look ahead at years to come. The personalized nature of this program has given students the time, space, mentorship, and resources to allow students to progress at an authentic pace. The daily work of each of these student teams is tailored to their specific needs. As such, students continuing at EF Academy next year and beyond will continue to have the opportunity to develop authentic solutions that the world needs. Future opportunities will include community  engagement and service learning, where students will engage in field study related to their projects; community partnerships, where groups can collaborate with local communities and organizations; and mentorship opportunities, where students can be coaches for other classmates just starting in the program. We’re excited to see how our incredible student body continues learning from and with each other year after year to make our world a better place.

Students and faculty returned from winter break rejuvenated and excited to make strides toward taking action on their GL projects. At this point in the year, GL groups were paired with faculty mentors and coaches whose expertise more closely aligned with the goals of our twenty different student groups. Many groups were ready to move beyond empathizing and defining identified challenges related to the SDGs, and progress to the ideating and prototyping phases of the design thinking process. As such, all twenty of our GL groups had the opportunity to formally articulate their ideas and needs to the Global Leadership Committee to share their progress and outline their action plans for the remainder of the year. The range of topic ideas and action plans was beyond impressive. Check out some highlighted GL groups at the bottom of this newsletter!

We’re excited to announce that all of the work from this year in GL will be showcased in our Global Leadership Symposium on May 26th. This will be an opportunity to hear from each of our student groups about their Global Leadership projects. Projects range from education and advocacy campaigns, to innovating solutions to pressing problems, and developing new inventions and products. In this final interactive exhibition of learning, students will have the opportunity to showcase their work to local community members, Pasadena government officials, and surrounding middle school students and teachers. We would also like to extend an invitation to any friends or family living or visiting Pasadena at the end of our school year to attend the Global Leadership Symposium. We’re so proud of the work that these students have done this year, and we can’t wait to have these teams leading the community through engaging exhibits, educational lessons, and outdoor activities. If you’d like to attend, please email our Head of Admissions, Bobbie Jo Dobbs, at [email protected]. We hope to see you there!