Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning

Seth, Hello everyone, and welcome to make it mindful. Insights for global learning, the podcast for globally minded educators seeking thoughtful conversations about how education can adapt to an ever changing world. I'm Seth Fleischauer, former classroom teacher turned founder of an international learning company specializing in the teaching of global learning. Together, we explore the interconnectedness of people, cultures and systems, and how these relationships shape transformative ideas in education. Each episode features educational change makers whose insights lead to practical solutions and lasting impact. And in this episode, my students and I are those educational change makers. We are going to take you back to the beginning of a bold idea, one that was born from Curiosity, a little bit of naivete and a deep belief in what's possible when connection transcends geography. You'll hear directly from the students who helped shape learning live. Our daily distance learning program launched nearly two decades ago between New York City and Taipei, Taiwan. What started with a camera and handful of fifth graders has now grown into a model of tech enabled, human centered learning. You'll hear how it built not just language fluency, but cultural fluency, and how confidence, critical thinking and global citizenship emerged from messy mistakes and virtual field trips that were anything but scripted. This is the story of what happens when students are trusted to explore the world with open hearts and open minds, and how even a scrappy startup idea can change lives across continents. Let's get into it.
I think the program helped me blend in and get used to my environment a lot quicker. I got to cover the news in Ukraine. I got all the information from there that is different than other stations in Taiwan. This experience has equipped me with the openness of my heart. I'm always open minded for new experience. Because of this class, we are applying for college, and we get to use English to talk to the professors, and it will be a lot easier for me to prepare for the interviews.
If I wasn't joining in this program, I would not have the courage to dare to jump out of my comfort zone. I
gotta tell you, these are the kinds of quotes that teachers dream about. Just staying in contact with your students years after they leave your care is its own kind of accomplishment, but learning of their success and the small part that you may have played in it is a driving force that keeps people in a profession that can otherwise be one of the most challenging in the world.
Hearing these students talk about our program now, for many of them, which should be a somewhat distant memory over half their life ago, it's easy to think it was always destined to work. And I think that when I started being in global learning in my late 20s, I was young and crazy enough to think that it actually would work, looking back though it was kind of a crazy idea.
So summer of 2007 I was teaching English at Tsai Shing school in Taipei. It was my first experience living abroad. I loved the school, I loved the people, and I fell in love with Taiwan itself, but I didn't really love teaching English as a series of like, isolated grammar rules and vocabulary drills. I started experimenting that summer, like putting English into context, building lessons around real communication instead of memorization. And the school took notice. They liked what they saw, and they asked me to stay, see if I could teach there for the year. So good job on that one. Can you show us some trees that are growing into the intercoastal? But my life was back in the US, including the lady I just met who is now the mother of my two children. So I guess good call to come back. And so I pitched them an idea, what if I could keep teaching their students, even from halfway around the world, using this newfangled technology called video conferencing. At first, it was a pretty scrappy operation. After my public school teaching day in New York City, I would drive out to Long Island to borrow this fancy teleconferencing machine just to be able to make the H dot 323, connection. And it all started with me a camera and 42/5 graders in Taipei. We basically co created an experience that felt exciting, simply because it was, it was brand new, and from that modest beginning, a whole new model of learning took root, one that would grow beyond anything we could have imagined at the time. And this is the story of how it happened, told through the students who lived it. Let's meet them.
My name is Jasper. I.
I'm 21 and I'm currently a student at Boston University. I study finance. So my name is Alicia, and I am 27 years old, and I am now a reporter at Taiwan's news station. Okay, hello, everyone. My name is Emily, and I'm currently a 12th graders and Zai Xing High School. Hi. My name is arrow young, and I'm from Taipei private Tsai Sheng school, currently waiting to be graduated from senior year. My name is Ian Cho and I'm currently a senior at zaixing High School, and right now I am graduating from daishing, about to head to medical school and college. Learning live is what we call our suite of educational services that are delivered over video conferencing that leverages quality pedagogy along with the expanded convenience and opportunity of video conferencing. When we first launched learning live, we had no blueprint. No one had really done anything like this before, a Daily Live distance learning program that was taught from half the world away. And at first, everything felt new, the technology, the way we interacted, even the idea that learning could stretch beyond the four classroom walls, we were driven by a shared belief that something special was happening here and we could make it into something meaningful and sustainable. So when I first joined the program, I was 10, right? So at that point, I hadn't done any sort of learning on anything but paper. It was just like a huge change, and it was very novel to me to like be able to do classwork, but through apps. Now, in true learning live fashion, we have a quick game. And this is something that we do in learning live a lot, which is the gamification of learning. So we make learning fun, and we do that through the use of technology. One of the most popular games that the students play is Kahoot so you can scan the QR code. Oh, you know, actually the memory of taking distance learning classes always very clear for me. It is like a little get away from our regular classes. I remember we learned Ancient Rome and ancient Greece like these are the parts that I cannot forget in my lifetime, the things I learned in business learning classes is unforgettable. This was more than just a break from the norm. It was the beginning of a shift away from memorization and towards something deeper, creating, connecting and actually thinking in English. English class was no longer lived only in the pages of a workbook and a textbook. It lived in conversations, in projects, in performances, in discoveries. At first, simply being able to see and talk to someone around the world that felt revolutionary. But over time, something even more powerful started to happen. It's a program that makes you really become a global citizen, you'll feel like you're really living on Earth. You have to discuss an ongoing issue happening around the world. And I just want to remind you that empathy is seeing with the eyes, hearing with the ears, and feeling with the heart of another. And I think what we're seeing at these valleys is a lot of empathy, and there's some big, big feelings going and
if you can,
because it made me realize, let's back up a
little here and try to understand Why this school would take a gamble on me, a 26 year old teacher, in the first place. It was a crazy idea for me to think that I could launch this blended learning, distance learning English program from 6000 miles away. But it was equally nuts for the school to build out a new teleconferencing room with cameras and sound panels just to make it all possible. So recording is now in progress. Everyone say hello. Recording.
Very good. Thank you very much. So it is awesome to see at the time, the school was going through a little bit of a renaissance, they were reestablishing their traditionally elite persona with this renewed focus on English and technology, and the program that I pitched slotted nicely into that initiative. But at that time, it was also difficult to find native speakers of English to teach in Taiwan. Part of this was a lack of understanding. So like back in America, when I would tell people about my new students in Taiwan, a lot of people would respond by saying, oh my gosh, I love Thai food. And while Taiwan's place in the geopolitical stage means that there's now a greater awareness of its people and culture, it's still not a major destination for Westerners when it comes to teaching English in context, though even the career teach abroad, teachers who find themselves in Taiwan today tend.
Do assimilate to the more traditional Taiwanese educational system, because that tends to be what works. Doing it in a different way is hard, and it takes a lot of support and structures to be able to do that.
Okay, guys, so now you already have some superpowers. You can identify which zone you're in, you're red, then you're angry, if you're blue, then you're a little bit sad. But now here's another superpower that we want to share with you, and it's how to move from one zone to the next so you can make good choices, that instinct to assimilate to the more traditional educational system, because that's what's working that happened to me too, and I came into this experience immersed in the progressive pedagogy of New York City's East Village. And my plan at the time was to bring what I saw working so well directly to Asia using the magic of live video. But very quickly, I realized that wasn't going to work. You can explain to a Taiwanese parent what progressive pedagogy is that it means that every student is going to get exactly what they need. But then the following week, when they realize that not every kid is doing the same thing, they'll be like, Wait, what is this? This doesn't look like the teaching. I know. So part of this is like collectivism versus individualism, and it was playing out in real time as I tried to bring not just English, but a more global way of thinking. To my students, I saw very quickly that if I wanted to get anywhere, I would need to move slowly. And so I started simply with how we view mistakes. I presented to the students multiple times per day before it even had an inkling of an impact, that mistakes were something to celebrate. I mean, this is an uphill battle with a culture that wants so direly to do anything but stick out it's okay just to say I made a mistake, like that's okay. Or you can say I made a
huge mistake, and that's okay too. What I was building toward is what has become the most enduring impact of our program. Graduates of learning live, feel comfortable sharing their original ideas in English, no matter the setting, that kind of confidence can only come when you've met an unfamiliar context, tried failed and tried again. So learning live, we ask them to try something different. We asked them to take risks, to express themselves, even if it wasn't perfect, to make things and break things and try again. Because the goal wasn't just fluency. Was confidence, was critical thinking. It was cultural fluency, the ability to meet the unfamiliar with curiosity, not fear. First of all, I want to, like talk about how vibrant and dynamic our class are. Like everybody has your own personality, and that push you to explore more personality of yourself, and then just show it to your the whole class and teachers, there are just a lot of ways for us to show ourselves. I think it's the ability to create something out of nothing, to kind of like, run with a rough idea and just like go for it, to take shots, even though you might miss that spirit lived in the projects we built together. Students weren't just studying English, they were using it to tackle real world problems, from building model bridges to pitching products for Shark Tank simulations, they were learning to collaborate, to compromise and to lead.
Well, the class is mostly about speaking English and using English to communicate with people. That really made me well more fluent in English, and it was probably some of the best time of my life. I used to always clash with the I'm not sure if you remember, oh yeah, we were just like, butt heads all the time I learned how to compromise, like how to come to an agreement on things that wasn't a big part of like any other class that we had. And then there were the field trips, not scripted tours, not rehearsed performances, but real messy, vibrant windows into everyday life around the world. Hi, teacher, Travis, good morning, good morning. Sorry to helicopters flying overhead. Everyone. It's good to see you. Good to meet you. I'm standing outside on a chilly Los Angeles morning. I am going to be taking you around downtown Los Angeles today, really kind of the heart of Los Angeles where it all began. Our very first live virtual trip was to a Starbucks in downtown Los Angeles. It might sound small and ridiculous, but in that Starbucks students notice things like how people lined up differently, how the drinks were customized, how the place of life felt there,
from there though our live virtual field trips, they.
Grew a lot bigger. Murals in Brooklyn, jazz musicians in New Orleans, Christmas traditions in suburban America, street festivals in Mexico City. We have been all over the world. Yeah, yeah. So teacher Jill, can we can we check out the Posada? Can we go in there?
Oh,
but now there's not a lot of light right here, but he's the courtyard inside of here. I do remember those field trips where teachers would just go to random places and then like, FaceTime us, and then like, talk to people on the streets. I think it was just a really unique chance for us to really just see what it's like on the other side of the Earth. The Earth. The most memorable one was the Christmas one. Yeah, teacher, Patricia's daughter goes around her neighborhood and put a present in front of one of her neighbors and knock the door and run away. I was shocked at that moment.
The beauty wasn't in how polished it was. It was in how alive it felt. Sometimes the video shook and the audio crackled, but what the students saw was real. The US government was trying to force his people onto reservations, and Crazy Horse was also of the Lakota people he fought against, that he resisted, a world that was messy, colorful, unpredictable and profoundly connected to their own lives, and that authenticity became one of the most powerful lessons we ever taught. And that's okay too.
Today, when I hear these students speak, it's clear they didn't just learn English. They learned how to live in a global world. So I feel like English is quite important for our industry, after my colleagues and my bosses know that I can speak
opportunity to go outside to interview people international current events. For example, I went to Japan in Singapore. We are applying for college, and it would be a lot easier for me to prepare for the interviews. I think the program helped me blend in and get used to my environment a lot quicker, not just the language part of things, but also in my team projects, I feel like the experience that I had definitely helped me to be a more responsible teammate. If I wasn't joining in this program, I would not have the courage to dare to jump out of my comfort zone, especially when I am going to study and stayed in six months, this experience has equipped me with the openness of my heart. I'm always open minded for new experience because of this class, I feel grateful for all the people and all the resources enable me to grow and to be the person I am today. Hello and welcome to daijin, popular radio. We are your hosts, Sarah and Jackie. Today, we'll be sharing. Not every student became a reporter or a world traveler, but every student became more themselves, more confident, more curious, more ready to meet whatever the future brings tune in next time for more diverse music and discussion. We're your hosts, Olivia and Jeremy, thanks for listening to dashing public rain.
There are so many things that are possible when you are not limited by physical location. Nothing expands opportunities like learning live
building learning live wasn't easy. We had to reimagine technology not as a gimmick, but as a bridge. We had to convince parents that their children's noisy, imperfect English was actually a sign of growth. We had to trust that giving students voice and choice would lead to deeper learning, even when it felt messy in the moment, and we had to hold on to the belief that connection, real human connection, was worth all the challenges today. Learning live has reached over 5000 students in 17 years on three continents. It sent graduates to universities like NYU, Boston University and top schools across Taiwan and the world. Students who once hesitated to raise their hands now raise their voices as global citizens. I think most of the outstanding students in my class right now, they're really successful too. English is very important, because you know, when you're good at or you're not afraid of speaking English when you were kids. That means you build the ability of this language, and you get to use this ability in the future
for saishing, learning. Live isn't just a program. It's part of their identity, academic excellence, character and global citizenship all braided together. It's a story about a.
Willing to take a risk, a story about teachers daring to innovate, and most of all, a story about students, about the incredible things that can happen when you trust them to explore the world with open hearts and open minds. Because in the end, education isn't about perfection, it's about preparation, preparing students to face uncertainty, to find their voice, to build their future wherever it leads. And
when you build learning on trust and connection, you don't just teach skills, you build the kind of confidence that lasts a lifetime. If this story reminded you why you started teaching, or sparked a new way of thinking about what's possible through live virtual learning, please share it with a colleague. Follow the show or leave us a review. It helps more globally minded educators find us and join the conversation. Please do check the show notes for links to learning live our daily distance learning program connecting classrooms across continents and of course, thank you. As always, to our editor, Lucas Salazar, if you're curious about where global education goes from here. Keep listening. These are the voices shaping its future, one bold idea at a time you.