Global Citizen Diploma
Bryan Bibby Smith, Humanities Teacher and Global Citizen Diploma Coordinator, and Maya, a Grade 10 student, answer your questions about the GCD.
To help us learn more about the Global Citizen Diploma at ACS Hillingdon, we met with Bryan Bibby Smith, Humanities Teacher and Global Citizen Diploma Coordinator, and Maya, a Grade 10 student, for a Q&A session on some of the fantastic work taking place as part of the programme.
Bryan, how long have you been with ACS, and what is your role at the school?
I joined ACS Hillingdon just over a year ago. My background has always been in looking for alternative ways to engage our citizen students in their communities and have an impact on the world as a whole. I'm Canadian; I was educated at the University of Toronto, and I've joined ACS Hillingdon after about 27 years of teaching with stops in Brazil, Colombia, and most recently, the Bahamas.
How has your first year here been?
I joined the ACS group of schools basically because I agreed with the culture, the commitment to values and the mission that the school has for its students. I've been very satisfied with seeing those words come off the wall and be actualised within the classrooms and hallways around the campuses that I've been able to join and visit.
ACS Hillingdon is the only school in the UK to offer the Global Citizen Diploma. How did you come to introduce the programme and why?
The consortium is now 10 schools globally, and ACS Hillingdon is currently the only one in the UK. The interest in establishing the Global Citizen Diploma here at ACS Hillingdon was to recognise the achievements that our students regularly pursue in their daily lives and as part of their education. Our students are very involved in their community, in sports and in setting personal goals for themselves. In that way, they're certainly the global citizens that we aspire for them to be.
The Global Citizen Diploma offers an opportunity for those students to be recognised for the things that they've been doing, as well as providing the opportunity to push them a little bit further by setting some goals that may be aspirational for them.
What does the programme involve?
The programme is set up so that students earn a variety of the 16 Elements within the Global Citizen Diploma programme. These range from things like Community Engagement, which might recognise a student's involvement in a voluntary role within a community programme, to things like Wilderness Experience, which they can connect with the Duke of Edinburgh experience.
Artistic Expression, Personal Management, Personal Goals, Academic Achievement; these are all things that our students are striving for on a daily basis within school, or things that they do in the community. The Global Citizen Diploma gives them the opportunity to have those actions recognised.
When a student has had an experience that lines up nicely with a particular Element, they are given some guiding questions and are encouraged to reflect on the experience and share it as a ‘story’. This could be in the form of a written narrative or as an interview, where they might interview one another and exchange questions back and forth. They could also share it as a podcast, or they could produce a video or a slideshow. It's really about getting them to reflect and think about the experience that they've had using some guiding questions to create a story that describes their experience.
I think a good illustration of this is that we've just had some students who have returned from a school trip to Spain. On the trip many of them were able to, in an authentic setting, apply the learning that they've been doing in Spanish class to achieve the GCD Element of Intercultural Communication. This recognises that our students sometimes have to bridge cultural and linguistic barriers in order to fully engage with a person as an individual. We know that as global citizens, the skill of being able to cross a cultural and linguistic divide is one that you're going to apply throughout your entire life.
The nice thing with the GCD is that you're recognised for the growth that you're making, and that recognition comes in the form of three different levels of achievement. One of them is the certificate, which we aspire for all of our graduates to achieve and which involves Community Engagement, Intercultural Communication, and Global Understanding as three of the central Elements. Those are mandatory elements within the programme, and then the students can choose from any one of 12 other awards that they may work towards.
That could be recognising their achievement in Artistic Expression or in a Personal Goal; for example one might be to star in the school musical or to start for the varsity volleyball team. It really allows the students to have a lot of opportunity to receive recognition for the things that they're doing to round out their experience here at ACS Hillingdon.
How does the diploma complement the other pathways at ACS Hillingdon?
There's a real alignment with the IB in the sense that whether you're doing the CP or the DP programme, both of which have an element of service which are required for them, things that you're doing in the GCD almost always transfer directly into our Creativity, Activity, and Service programme. So rather than having to do things twice, you're getting recognised in two different places for the things you're already doing.
The GCD really offers an opportunity for students to differentiate themselves from some of their peers who are applying for similar university places. There's a story behind you and a set of experiences that you've engaged in to become a well-rounded and experienced person before entering your higher education years.
Maya, what have you studied as part of this diploma in Grade 10?
I do the other normal subjects as well as Biology and Chemistry, and I also take Music as an art, and I do English and Maths.
Bryan mentioned you can make your own personal choices about how you display your work, in an essay or via a podcast. Which path have you chosen?
I'm really a writing person. So I just wrote in an essay format. That's how I always did my stories. The latest one that I've written was the community engagement one. I previously volunteered in a pharmacy so I talked about how that experience has helped me understand the work involved, how to socialise with other people, and what I've gotten out of volunteering in that place.
What was it like to work in the pharmacy? What did you learn there?
I learned how to communicate with other people, adults, in a formal way. I learned how to communicate with the public because I don't really have a lot of interactions outside school, especially with talking to the public. One of the things I did was to help people fill out their COVID forms, for example their vaccine forms, and some of them had a language barrier between them. It was a good chance for me to understand how to help somebody who doesn't have as good English as me, and how we can reach an understanding even when there's a language barrier.
You mentioned music at the start of our conversation. How will you be showcasing your achievements with this diploma?
I love music, it's one of my biggest passions, so I do a lot of music production courses outside of school especially in the summer. I take music production courses and then add them to my Artistic Expression Element. I talk about the songs that I make and how I've improved over the years on my music production, as well as how my understanding of using the music software has improved. The software is really complicated and it took me a long time to understand it. I also was part of the school play Grease, and although I was a stage manager, I was also able to help my music teacher a bit with the music production.
How do you feel that this diploma and taking part in it is preparing you for the future?
I feel it prepares me to think about my skills outside of my grades. What I can bring into a workplace, to internships, with some of the other things I'm doing. It helps to build a strong resume that I can use moving forward as I think about university placements.
What has impressed you most about the students' work towards the GCD?
I think the thing that has impressed me the most is how active our student body is as a whole. As Maya was alluding to there, they do a lot of things that are regarded as ‘soft skills’ - twenty-first-century skills.
They're generating a lot of experiences that, if we didn’t have this programme, I don't think would be recognised in the same way. Even within something like CAS from the IB, it doesn't necessarily recognise some of the things that our students are doing that broaden their skills. For example, in the Duke of Edinburgh our students are pushing themselves to complete an outdoor challenge, which isn’t an opportunity that's necessarily going to turn up in class. So these students have that chance to celebrate the things that they're doing and get recognition for it. It amazes me how many things our students are actually doing.
I think the programme also gives us, as teachers, an opportunity to glimpse into the things that we don't see from our students in class. For example, when a student produces their Artistic Expression Story that goes along with that Element, you often get a glimpse into what that student's interests are outside of the classroom. Or seeing the things that they are doing on a voluntary basis, connecting to their community and the things that matter to them in a way that wouldn't necessarily come up in class.
What is the future for the programme at ACS Hillingdon?
We are aiming high and we're striving to make that happen. Our hope is that every single graduate at ACS Hillingdon, regardless of the amount of time that they've been a part of our school, will achieve this certificate. That means the 3 Elements, Community Engagement, Global Understanding, Intercultural Communication, plus any one of the other 12 elements as a certification before they graduate from our school.
We're aiming to have 100% of our students participate, and our progress thus far has been picking up. I think it's a great opportunity for our students to differentiate themselves by reflecting on the experiences that they're having and, as part of their education, push themselves to have different experiences.
