“Global awareness” is a 21st Century skill. How do you teach it? In this story, a group of excited and caring fourth graders create their own lesson plan.

The litany of skills identified as important for 21st Century students and adults includes applied skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork and collaboration, oral and written communications, and a good work ethic. The skill sets described by various blue-ribbon groups also include more overarching skills like creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.

And then there’s global “awareness” – the need to understand the interdependence of humans in a wired, flat world.

So how do teachers integrate these skills into their everyday classroom curricula, while also integrating key components of the technologies that increasingly define what it means to be a 21st Century citizen? And how do they engage students sufficiently to get the skills to “stick”?

On the sticking point, many learning experts remind us that kids learn best when they believe the learning has a real purpose, when they have authentic audiences (not only the other kids in the class), and when they can use what they’re learning to make sense of the world.

The “Africa project” that sprang up at Paine Intermediate School in Trussville, Alabama, is a powerful case in point.

It began when a fourth grade teacher went looking for an article that could help teach a particular comprehension skill to her students. It needed to be a non-fiction article, and after combing through various student magazines, she found a story about malaria in Africa and how many children’s lives could be saved if mosquito nets were more plentifully available.

“Once they read the article about the mosquito nets, my students became so passionate about the kids who were dying from malaria each day in Africa, they were begging to get in contact with the agency Nothing But Nets that was mentioned in the article,” says teacher Jennifer McLaughlin.

Peace Corps volunteer Sarah Koch participated in a live Internet interview from Africa with students at Paine Intermediate School, where Sarah's mother Sue teaches.

Fourth grade students began making posters and displaying them throughout the school as a fund-raising project. They went on WPIN, the school’s closed-circuit morning news show, to help educate Paine’s third, fourth and fifth graders about malaria and mosquito nets.

Then, rather amazingly, the fourth graders discovered they had a strong African connection within the walls of their own school. Sue Koch, a teacher in Paine’s gifted program, had a daughter working for the Peace Corps in Laboya, a remote village in Senegal. Sarah slept under a mosquito net each night and was well-versed about the threat of malaria among poor families in rural Africa.

Several years before, Sarah had discovered that a two-year old girl in the village was sick with malaria and urged her family to take the child to the nearest city where doctors were available. When the family protested that they couldn’t pay the cost, Sarah made a sling, tied the baby to her chest, and peddled for several hours to the nearest clinic to get medical help. As a result, the little girl Kadesha is a healthy four-year old today.

Paine’s technology teacher, Kristi Stacks, knew about Sarah and the story of Kadesha and realized the potential power of a conversation between PIS students and the Peace Corps volunteer. Sue Koch contacted her daughter and they made arrangements for her to participate in an Internet-based conversation with the Paine kids the next time Sarah was in a city with high-speed Internet connections.

“Sue had visited Sarah in Africa the previous October,” Stacks says. “So she prepared a PowerPoint with all her photos and we showed that over WPIN. Sue talked about the village Sarah lived in – it was excellent because it prepared the kids to talk with Sarah in Africa. Before that it was words on a page. The PowerPoint made it real for them.”

A few days later, Stacks set up the call with Sarah, using the free Skype internet telephone service. Gathered around a laptop and a microphone, Paine’s fourth grade team interviewed Sarah from the school’s TV studio. The interview was broadcast live over WPIN so everyone in the school could hear.

“It was just incredibly powerful,” Stacks says. “This was the best kind of learning, and it’s something our students will never forget. If anyone wonders what it means to teach ‘global awareness,’ I can’t think of a better example.”

Find out more about the Africa project and view a video of the students’ Skype interview at this ABPC wiki page prepared by ABPC 21st Century teacher fellow April Chamberlain.