Glocal Resources: How can I find resources in the New York City community that support what I’m trying to accomplish with global education?

“Glocal” is not a misprint. It is a way of thinking about global education in a way that allows us to practice its tenets within the space where we live.

Below are a few starting places. I selected them for their quality and their ability to help students celebrate the diversity of New York, how they contribute to it, and how we are, after all, a melting pot of people from everywhere. If you are looking at this guide from outside the city, use this for ideas of how to tap into your own community’s resources.

As with the previous section, I have divided it into a description, a small and a large way to potentially integrate the resource, and a PBL idea which may or may not have been already tried. As a teacher and an artist, I believe that creating an idea and then bringing it to class almost always works out.

1. New York City Mayor’s Office for International Affairs

How it can help students: This is the NYC office which works directly with the UN to address global issues like sustainable development and women’s rights. Global diplomacy can be “glocal” and even city governments, like New York’s, can play a role in improving the world.
Small integration: A current events discussion could be greatly enhanced by including a press release from the office on some kind of local initiative.
Large integration: Students could research a specific global issue and then produce a policy proposal to provide for the Mayor’s office. This is probably easier in smaller communities but what politician doesn’t want the Instagram moment when a group of school children are heard?

2. The United Nations (UN) Headquarters

How it can help students: As I said before, the UN is tied to global education perhaps like no other body, but it’s “glocal” in New York City. Visiting the United Nations offers a lasting and memorable way of understanding the global community as made up of intelligent people.
Small integration: A class discussion can be jump-started by a UN-created video or report on one of its many international topics.
Large integration: Classes can take a guided tour of the UN. This actually happens all the time in our city. But the tours, even without the Model UN, are a great culmination to a unit on global citizenship.

3. The Tenement Museum

How it can help students: This museum tells such an important tale of New York, namely how families, often freshly immigrated to New York, lived daily in cramped and impoverished settings. The story of immigration is an American story, a New York story, and it is illustrated no where better.
Small integration: A teacher can use the online resources on the museum’s website to appreciate the challenges an immigrant would have encountered.
Large integration: A field trip to the museum could spark a project on their own immigration stories, delving into living memory interviews, family trees, and human, generational progress.

4. Human Rights Watch

How it can help students: We all recognize Human Rights Watch as a vigilant presence paying attention to injustices everywhere, and their presence in New York City is strong. Understanding human rights abuses can be difficult in our nation, where they are not always visible. Human dignity is a poignant, gripping issue that our students love to explore.
Small integration: A teacher can bring a Human Rights Watch press release into the class, like freedom of expression or girl’s schooling, just to spark a discussion.
Large integration: Students can determine what human rights issue is important to them, research it on this site, and then launch an advocacy campaign with petitions or letters. Even if the campaign doesn’t solve the problem, students learn that their voices can be heard and that politicians and change-makers can be accessed.

5. The Met (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

How it can help students: The Met has a vast collection of treasures from every corner of the globe. I use the Met and it’s resources for every single lesson I place. The museum is free to NYC students.
Small integration: Teachers can include pieces – which are all on their website in a very index-friendly system – to introduce virtually any lesson.
Large integration: A class can do research with the website, make virtual tours, and then go on a field trip there. I have my students research works of art and then present them in the library one-on-one to younger children.

Teacher As Artist