When we as educators talk about global education curriculum, we often talk about the ways in which we can encourage our students to learn about the world’s diverse cultures. We integrate stories, journalistic essays, documentaries, and other media into our daily lessons that showcase how we as people are diverse, unique, and unified. This works. Children respond. And the classroom is better for it. But how do we encourage students to be independent agents when they are on our Global Learning tours? What happens when the teacher is not putting content in front of them, but when they are asked to explore, inquire, and make educated observations by themselves? A starting point: I ask students to notice what people are doing with their hands. 

At Studio Education, many of our courses are built around reading great works of fiction. Starting at three years old, children in the Junior English program begin to engage with stories in picture books. Reading chapter books and novels is fundamental to the Kids Canon and Teens Canon programs, and classic plays are integral to the Literature and Drama program. But why fiction? Why do we put so much emphasis on actually reading real books at Studio? Reading fiction is a truly magical experience. Fiction transports us to another time, another place, another body, another soul. By reading works of fiction we can inhabit the minds of not only great characters but great authors.

I have been a teacher for far fewer years than most of the ones that I know. Still, it has been long enough that I’ve been asked more than once by students why I became a teacher and I have never come up with a satisfying answer.

Whilst I was sourcing writers for the online component of the Story of England trip, one tutor from my alma mater in Scotland questioned me on why Studio did not run a ‘Story of Britain’ trip instead. As a comment stuck on at the end of her email, almost as an afterthought, it was difficult to assess whether I was to take it in the spirit of the sort of academic playfulness one comes to expect from the university environment or as a more sincere challenge altogether.