The What School Could Be Podcast 118. See, Feel, Listen, Savor, Absorb, Intuite, with THINK Global School's Joann McPike
Joann McPike is the Founder and Board Chair at THINK Global School (TGS), a traveling high school, and much more. In September of 2010, TGS began its first semester in Sweden with 15 students hailing from 11 countries. The traveling high school has since visited every continent except Antarctica, hosted dozens of influential guest speakers, campaigned for human and environmental rights, mounted art exhibitions, created thousands of essays, blog posts, and videos, sent graduating students to university, and fostered lifelong friendships between students from around the globe. Check out TGS's YouTube channel. A foundation established by McPike provides long-term funding for TGS and allows for broad cultural and economic diversity within the student body, ensuring that promising global citizens from all walks of life will have the opportunity to make the TGS experience their own. But the TGS's vision goes beyond serving its students. With an emphasis on education through experience, service as citizenship, and sharing best practices with other educational institutions worldwide, TGS aims to not only shape students who are informed, engaged, and inspired, but also to leave a positive impact on both the world of education and the world at large. Chris Balme, the acclaimed author of Finding the Magic in Middle School and the triple founder of schools in California and Japan said this about my guest today: “Joann leads with boldness, style, and bravery. She and her team have built one of the most unique and compelling schools on the planet. It's like an ideal version of the United Nations, exceptionally diverse, practicing place-based and project-based learning at very high levels. Today it's beginning to more directly influence and train schools around the world, and it all started with her willingness to think big and think differently.” Editing services provided by Evan Kurohara's Søzen Audio. Our theme music is provided by the master pianist, Michael Sloan.