Learning to Change the World — from Around the World

Harvard’s third annual Worldwide Week, running October 5-9, showcases the unparalleled breadth and impact of Harvard’s scholars, who are drawn from 200 countries — and an even wider swath of backgrounds — around the globe.

Now more than ever, with HGSE moving to all-remote learning in 2020–21, the Ed School is embodying Harvard’s spirit of worldwide engagement, as students around the world are “Zooming in” to the school’s virtual campus every day.

Here, several master’s students describe the ways in which HGSE is truly “worldwide” — and why “going global” is so important to education.

Leah Anyanwu
Kenya | Human Development and Psychology
During my career as an educator, I’ve had the opportunity to work with students and educators from a range of countries, including the U.S., Kenya, South Sudan, Nigeria, Ghana, and India. Across all these contexts, I’ve observed that learning is constructed through dialogue and sharing diverse experiences. Moreover, during these increasingly polarizing times, engaging with others who hold various viewpoints helps us build empathy and foster deeper understanding through building community. My time at HGSE has undoubtedly been enriched by my cohort’s diversity. Students who otherwise might have been unable to participate due to various demands, have now brought with them a richness of experiences and contexts. Engaging with international peers at HGSE has demonstrated to me that global engagement allows us to share best practices and to deepen our understanding of education by learning from each other and incorporating global best practices. We live in an increasingly connected world. As educators, we must understand the global context in which we operate and be prepared to build educations systems that enable future generations to collaborate across lines of difference and to thrive in a multicultural society.

Aaron Appleton
Kenya | Technology and Education
Our global cohort offers an educational touchpoint that carries the voices and beauty of the world into each other's lives, elicits a sense of wonder, and awakens a deeper sense of relatedness to other cultures. As an educational product designer, I have benefited from engaging with diverse ways of thinking and being that further my artistic imagination and help me to understand a greater range of contexts and perspectives.

Luis Miguel Hadzich Girola
Peru | Technology in Education
Being able to stay in Peru while taking classes at HGSE has provided me with the unique possibility to stay connected to the socio-cultural reality of my country while learning from professionals worldwide. Especially in these hard times, it has allowed me to be close to my family and available to give and receive support when needed. To be honest, I was initially afraid that the online learning experience would not rise to the expectations I had of a “Harvard experience,” but I was gratefully surprised. Most of the learning experiences feel carefully designed to promote creativity and interaction between peers, advisers, and teachers. For me, the “Harvard experience” doesn’t lie anymore between the limits of its campus but is now defined by the potential of its community members, wherever in the world we are.

Maria Haqqani
Pakistan | Language and Literacy
“So, Maria, where are you Zooming in from?” asked the TF genially when the seminar commenced.

“I’m in Karachi, Pakistan. It’s 4 a.m. for me right now,” I respond cheerily.

In the jigsaw of videos on my Zoom screen, I witness some jaws drop. Some faces dissolve into astonished laughter. Some indecipherable exclamations and some words of sympathy. I declare that as an early sleeper and an early riser, 4 a.m. is a perfectly reasonable time for me to attend class. Awestruck expressions greet my words.  

When I applied to HGSE, I had never dreamed I would be expected to make friends via my laptop screen. I had never imagined I could even manage to do that, even if I were expected to. Yet here I am, sitting nine hours into the future from the HGSE campus, exchanging addresses with pen pals, receiving care packages from cohort-mates, having classmates check up on me to make sure I am up to attend classes scattered in odd times during my night. Here I am, receiving heartwarming emails from professors, urging me to prioritize health over courses.  

I sit in my home, traversing time and space to be at HGSE in the homes of my caring friends and kind professors. I love hosting my friends and professors in my home too, and am grateful to HGSE for offering me the opportunity to display this hospitality.

Because for me, HGSE has been — and will always be — home.

Cameron Tribe
Australia | Technology in Education
Whilst some may choose to focus on the challenges of 2020, I prefer to see the many opportunities. Remote learning has brought our international student community closer than ever before, as we share our personal lives and cultures in this new digital context. We’re all earnestly engaging with our HGSE community, knowing that now it is more important than ever to be connected and supported. The 2020 “worldwide” campus offers insights into our lives that we might not otherwise have shared, but will actually — in time — provide a better education in life for us all. Through simple and subtle imagery, like Zoom locations and backgrounds, we have been given the gift of glimpses into each other’s global lives. It has channeled our empathy, sparked our imagination, and fostered our desire to know more. I have the regular pleasure of learning with fellow students living in Boston, Vancouver, Seoul, Beijing, Bangkok, Trondheim, Dubai, and London — all in one class. In a two-hour lecture, I experience a visual representation of a 24-hour Earth day, instantaneously, through the backgrounds, anecdotal comments, and cups of coffee we all share during the lecture. I will be forever grateful for the opportunity I have been given to collaborate with this international community of educators. Despite our geographical separation, we are a family that has never been closer.