Ice Road Truckers on a most dangerous road in India

What better way to spend a Saturday sick with a sick daughter than to lounge on the couch all day and watch 3 Ice Road Truckers on a perilous journey! They had to drive a truck and make deliveries along the roads of Delhi, India and the Himalayas. Now that part of alone was completely captivating, but that's not what caught my attention.

"Himalayan road" by simon-and-india @ flickr

I have been watching tv to understand what is happening in home throughout America. I've commented in the past on shows like Clean How and What Not to Wear, but I noticed something different in this series of Ice Road Truckers, Dangerous Road edition.

Yes, I know there are shows that have taken place in other countries, but in this episode, the trucker had a spotter. A spotter is a man from India who drives in the truck and offers his assistance and knowledge about the roads. A camera was placed in the truck that captured everything, body language, conversations, conflicts, facial expressions, and commentary from the truckers point of view.

"Busy street in New Delhi" photo courtesy of Christian Haugen @ flickr

What a clash of cultures! At first, I thought it was going to show how the two cultures would come to an understanding, work together and learn from each other when meeting the challenges of the journey. And there were times where that occurred, but more openly was the obvious misunderstanding of how each culture functioned.

I wonder if more shows are going to start diving into this opportunity and model for us Americans that it is  important to have an understanding and respect of other cultures because we have some challenging global challenges to meet along the way with the economy, environment and health.

Working globally in schools has been a challenge. I'm not sure if it's the safety provided within the walls of the classroom or the understanding that children can learn from more than one expert, but when I have seen teachers work with others around the world, the impact on the student learning has been positive for everyone. This has to be a good experience for helping our children understand how to solve global problems in their future, right?

Speed Dating

It's a quick way to get to know someone, right? One of the things we know about building capacity is that we need to build relationships.

Even though we are all interconnected, that doesn't necessarily mean there is a comfort level for working together.

So how does this work? It's starts with an idea that gets spelled out on a whiteboard. It's strategically planned. Then we jump in.

Last Thursday, we invited members of our community and teachers from our district to do such a thing. We introduced what a charter was, what our charter was all about and then began the experience. Each pair had 2 minutes to answer questions, such as "What was your favorite subject?", "What are your interests?"

Fine, right? Well there's more to this besides building relationships between teachers and community members.

Let's examine it - what do people typically do in these activities? how do they feel?

Right. Avoid questions they don't want to answer, feel uncomfortable with the people they don't know.

Well, if we know that there are global issues such as the environment and economy that our children are going to encounter in their future, engaging our students with others around the world now will help build those global relationships so that it just becomes the norm for working with others around the world. Students are used to working with their peers and teacher, but working with experts or other adults - it's not something we can assume.

The other point noted was that when there was a comfort level, people thought 2 minutes was not enough - they had found that each had something to share that had value.

What if we engage students in this type of experience? Will they grow up expecting to include various perspectives when solving problems?