PRINCIPLED Learning Strategies, Inc.

The mission of PLS is to help schools and organizations move beyond tolerance to a culture of compassionate and constructive global engagement. We do this by providing professional development workshops, coaching and curriculum expertise in the following areas:

Project-Based Learning geared toward solution building, social action, self expression, effective cross-cultural dialogue, collaboration, and the exploration of cultural and personal identity.

Resources that include web-based curriculum and professional development geared directly toward the needs of teachers, bringing the world into classrooms and classrooms into the world.

International Collaborations & Travel program development, including international homestay and service projects. Scholarship development for equity of opportunity to go abroad.

Networking with other global educators, providing practical partnerships with global educational organizations, and inspiring creative avenues for teaching controversial global topics.

Curriculum & Professional Development that give teachers practical methodologies for the global enrichment of their courses (K-12), and evaluation strategies which ensure authentic cross-cultural experiences.

Integration of global issues across the curriculum, school-wide international event planning, and support for mainstreaming global topics across all grade levels and disciplines.

Pedagogies that help your students build critical thinking and problem-solving skills through interactions with global issues and the perspectives of people experiencing them.

Leadership Strategies that help students find constructive avenues for responding to global conflict, simultaneously developing their cross-cultural competency as 21st Century thinkers and leaders.

E-Technologies that use social networking and digital video conferencing to directly connect students with other young people in the world.

Diversity & Pluralism that develop students' ability to hear and honor the needs of others. Global education moves students beyond tolerance to authentic understanding and compassion for the experience of others.

Global Education: A 21st Century Imperative
Jennifer discusses her work at Appleby College.

Todos los servicios de PLS estan disponibles en español.

What PLS Offers Your School

Professional Development Workshops
PLS works with a variety of schools, training K-12 teachers in authentic, effective global education. Ideal training scenarios include several days on site in order to...

Visit classrooms
Provide a full or half-day in-service training to the entire faculty
Meet with teachers by academic discipline and/or division
Meet individually with teachers to coach them through their curriculum planning
Meet with administrators to strategize toward the development of rich global programming

PLS works directly with teachers and administrators to help develop authentic approaches to global education, including...

Project-based design strategies for global learning
Inquiry-based design strategies for global learning
Problems- and challenge-based curriculum design
Student- and solutions-driven curriculum design
Gender-specific approaches to global learning
Curricular strategies which develop students' leadership skills
Integration of global e-technologies
Creative approaches to cross-cultural and global studies integration across the K-12 curriculum

Our services include...

Foundational strategizing with teachers, administrators, and other key stakeholders toward central global programming choices, including international service learning trips for students and teachers, global themes and focuses for the community, and areas of need in the curriculum
Teacher training in one or a variety of curricular design strategies
Direct work with teachers and teacher teams
Classroom observation and evaluation
Ongoing coaching as needed

PLS assists with everything from school-wide global initiatives and new schools/programs, to the design and global enrichment of specific courses and projects.

PLS also offers more specific workshops focused on approaches to teaching conflict regions. PLS's methods effectively humanize conflict and build students' pluralism and empathy, particularly in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Cuban Revolution.

Student Workshops
PLS offers student workshops in the following areas, all with an eye to increasing global pluralism in students:

Poetry Workshops, especially Poetry of Witness, the exploration of poetry from regions of conflict
Research Journalism Initiative presentations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and connecting with the story of the "other"
The Cuban Revolution and different perspectives about essential freedoms, rights and responsibilities
Live video conferencing with the Middle East

With teachers from Appleby College (Ontario), on a Faculty Development Trip to Peru, July 2012

"Principles, once internalized, lead to something. They prompt activity, impel motion, direct choices. A principled person always has a place to stand, knows where he or she is coming from and likely to end up. Principles always lead the person who possesses them somewhere, for some purpose, to do something, or choose not to. Neither principles nor values lead anywhere if they remain abstract, embalmed in print, or are not internalized by human persons. If they are to be taught, the principles need a human face; they must be conveyed in words and images that move the heart."
William J. Byron