Creating Next-Generation Leaders
World Leadership School was founded on the belief that K-12 schools can be the ultimate platform for creating next-generation leaders who will change our world for the better. But for this to happen, school as we know it has to be reimagined.
We believe that Purpose Learning presents a clear path forward through the fog of today’s education reform. We are working to build a movement around learning as thinking, feeling, and doing that empowers students to explore their unique purpose.
We help schools transform learning by taking students out into the world, and we coach teachers to bring world-connected learning back into the classroom. We support teachers as they create new experiments in learning. We help school leaders create bold visions. We find that schools often overestimate what can happen in one year. But they underestimate what they can accomplish in five years with clear goals and the right approach.
In our view, the future of learning needs to be understood and experienced. That is why we offer immersive travel programs for students and teachers that help participants disconnect and decenter in order to re-envision new possibilities.
Teaching for the future is a paradigm shift for most teachers. That is why we believe in the power of combining workshops and coaching. We believe that teachers can do incredible new things with the right support, and that these showcases of learning can drive change across the whole school.
At World Leadership School, we engage with our host communities & community partners with a spirit of learning. We believe these incubators of leaders, ideas, and innovation that consistently inspire students to develop new skills and take action back in their own communities. Rather than looking for problems to be fixed, we see amazing assets and opportunities.
“Walking Together” is the way we describe our asset-based approach to community engagement. We build long-term, year-round relationships with communities and community partners through our community coordinators, who live close to the places where we work. We pair a maximum of three traveling schools with a host community to ensure sustainability and deep relationships. Our pre-program curriculum helps students explore their own identities, acknowledge the power and privilege that come along with identities and discover the nuances of the host culture and community. This preparation helps our students move into a spirit of learning and listening, rather than fixing and helping. Our programs spotlight purpose-driven local leaders who are using their own gifts to have an impact on their community. We believe that our host communities offer so many lessons that our students, and their communities, need right now.
It is in the spirit of these beliefs that we pledge to:
- Dismantle the pitfalls of student travel and voluntourism work by designing our programs to highlight the assets of the communities with which we work.
- Provide students with the tools to speak up and take action when they are confronted with inequity.
- Teach students and adults how to listen for understanding and hold a space to hear the voices of black and brown communities who have been silenced for far too long.
- Empower teachers to reimagine learning so that they can have the courage to talk about race and inequity in their classrooms and, in so doing, create leaders empowered to fight against society’s inequities.
- Help make schools a place where historically marginalized students and faculty feel they belong, they are welcome, and they matter.
- Recruit and build a diverse and inclusive community of office staff, instructors, coordinators, and in-country partners.
- Fight against racial injustices through anti-racism work in our programs and within our organization.
We know that this is a journey and we are committed to doing this work with our schools, within our organization, within our communities, and within ourselves.
How do schools change? Our strategy is to give teachers the space and support to collaborate and try new things. When teachers step forward and create new types of learning experiences, school communities can celebrate these showcases of learning to drive further innovation. Little by little, other teachers take notice and try new things themselves. Changes happens “slowly until it happens all at once.”
At World Leadership School, we drive school change by working on multiple levels at once. Our student travel programs pump new energy into schools by inspiring students and faculty. Our educator development workshops, coaching, and travel programs allow teachers to bring purpose-driven curriculum into the classroom. Our services around visioning and leadership coaching help leaders see new program ideas, overcome roadblocks, and develop school change initiatives.
Different schools have different entry points into working with World Leadership School depending on where they are and what they need. Many schools start with a single student travel program that builds energy year after year.
With other school partners, we begin working with a handful of teachers who are open to new approaches and want to go deeper in their teaching. Through our Virtual Coaching Institute, we provide one-on-one coaching to help these teachers develop new kinds of learning experiences that embody the future of learning at their school. These learning showcases can help inspire other teachers and prepare the ground for large change efforts. Educator travel programs can help teachers shift their worldviews and their practices in and out of the classroom.
And yet in other cases, we begin working with a school’s leadership team and faculty thought leaders on strategic planning, global education program design, or risk management. Often, our role as an outside facilitator is to galvanize consensus around an initiative.
Regardless of the entry point, our goal is the same: help schools accomplish their goals around transformative learning that nurtures purpose-driven students.
Explore WLS
Student travel locations
