may be unable to control the pace of your partner’s engagement, and I discourage you from forcing your priorities on your partner. Partnerships often take longer than expected to cultivate simply because communication styles are different, and teachers in different parts of the world often have vacations, national exams, and other demands at different times of the year. These complexities mean that building in more time for connecting than you estimate needing, and being flexible enough to allow global engagement to continue even after you’ve moved into new material, are paramount to your success. Most often, if one class has finished final products and needs to move on to new material while their partners are still working on theirs, reconnecting is just a question of circling back to share student work and celebrate the learning together. For example, in a mythology project done at Appleby College (Canada) and Paraíso High School (Costa Rica), classes work on products at totally different times of year because their school year calendars are so different. Teachers have learned to transition in and out of the projects as needed.
Creating the best timing possible means choosing a time frame that works well for you and your partner teacher. Flexibility is key to equity, as chapter 7 (page 129) explores, but sometimes curriculum sequencing or seasonal themes make it hard to move a topic to better fit the needs of a partner teacher. For example, many elementary teachers in North America explore reproduction in spring, when students will see evidence of animal and plant birth around them, so a partnership on this topic would need to occur in spring for both teachers—which means that a simultaneous partnership between Southern and Northern Hemisphere schools would be impossible. To avoid problems later in the partnership, be specific if you have time frame requirements (and be sure to identify timing in your outreach by naming the months, as seasons vary depending on hemisphere). Keep in mind that Southern-Hemisphere schools are on summer break during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter, and vice versa, which means that connecting northern and southern schools requires timing partnerships from September to November and from March to May, when schools in both hemispheres are most likely to be in session simultaneously.
How Important Is the Opportunity for Synchronous Communication?
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