Teachers at the University Charter School (UCS) in Sumter County, Alabama, were initially unsure about implementing Global Nomads Group’s Student to World program.

Middle school math teacher Rochelle Tolliver was the school’s first facilitator. “We were hesitant because we thought it was adding more to our already full plate. Once we saw how organized the program was and what a win-win it was for us, we immediately embraced it.”

UCS subscribes to a “place-based learning” model, focused on engaging students in their community, including their physical environment, local culture, history, and people. Students take what they learn in the classroom and apply it to the world they live in. 

UCS’s Student to World program began as a pilot in the fall of 2021, with one middle school class incorporating the program one day a week. The program was so successful that the three other middle school teachers asked to join in as well. By the end of the year, every UCS middle-school class had completed the program.

It turns out the Student to World program fits perfectly with their place-based model. Tolliver says, “We look at things on a global level and then try to make that same impact here at home, which is exactly how Student to World is structured.”

Elizabeth Reed, Place-Based Education Advisor at UCS, was an early champion of the program. “When I learned about it, I got all fired up,” she says.

UCS is located in a rural part of Alabama, which, Reed says, can limit students’ exposure to the wider world. “We were trying our hardest to cultivate these real-world experiences for the students,” Reed says, “but it was proving very difficult. The Student to World program is the easiest way to get their voices out and to connect them with someone else from a different population, from a different culture, on the other side of the globe.”