Student-led Podcasts Develop Real-world Project Management Skills
Across every continent, students have mastered a complex, high-speed visual shorthand - the meme. While often dismissed as distraction, these viral images function as digital folklore - a universal language that transcends borders, carrying stories of identity, culture & resistance.

In this interactive session, a Gen Z Engineering Student and a Veteran Educator team up to bridge the generational divide. We demonstrate how to reverse-engineer memes from passive consumption into a rigorous storytelling tool. We move beyond the humor to show how visual templates function as modern synthesis, allowing students to distill complex lived experiences into concise metaphors that can be understood globally.

Attendees will participate in a "Live Build," learning to architect "Meme-Logic" assessments. They will leave with a framework to turn their classroom into a space where students do not just consume digital content, but ethically "author" their own knowledge, sharing their local reality with a global audience.

About Simar Mohanty
👩‍🎓 Simar Mohanty is the Team Lead and Student Coordinator of the all-girls student club 'SDG Warriors.' Passionate about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, she leads her team of student changemakers and STEMinists in developing solutions to address the world’s most pressing problems, driving change through global student-led projects and transforming ideas into impactful initiatives. As the Student Founding Member of the Human Intelligence Movement, Simar brings her superpowers of curiosity, creativity, and communication to amplify student voices and perspectives from the grassroots of education. Whether through international presentations or spearheading the SDG Warriors podcast, Simar believes in the power of student voice and storytelling. She strives to take action and 'Be the Change,' because if you won’t, who will?

About Kamal Preet
👩‍🏫 Kamal Preet is the Mentor of the SDG Warriors, a National Geographic Certified Educator and a lifelong learner from Bangalore, India. A former Middle School Science and Computer Science Educator, she is passionate about STEM, the Global Goals, Gamification and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). As a Microsoft Alumni and former Educator Innovation Lead, Kamal combines her background in usability design, edtech integration and classroom innovation to design practical, easy-to-implement learning experiences that drive engagement and content mastery. Her mentorship empowers students to think critically, collaborate globally and become changemakers through technology and storytelling.

Student Voices in the Age of AI: Stories of Access, Language, and Learning
What happens when students who once felt invisible in classrooms become leaders, presenters, and global storytellers? In this student-led session, elementary learners share powerful, real stories about how artificial intelligence changed their experience in school—and in life.

Multilingual students will describe what it felt like to sit in classrooms where they couldn’t understand their teacher, couldn’t fully express themselves, and struggled to build friendships. They will share how AI-powered translation and learning tools opened doors—allowing them to access content, participate in discussions, and feel like true members of their learning community for the first time.

Students will also share how AI supports learners with differences such as dyslexia and other learning needs by providing flexible ways to read, write, communicate, and show understanding.

Our school community represents families from over 100 countries. Students will open the session by greeting the audience in multiple languages including Japanese, Hindi, Turkish, Chinese, and more—demonstrating how identity, culture, and language belong in classrooms.

This is not about technology first. This is about belonging, access, confidence, and student voice—powered by responsible, developmentally appropriate AI use in elementary education.

About Alana Winnick (and students)
We are elementary students from a school in Sleepy Hollow, New York, where our families come from more than 100 countries around the world. At our school, we learn how to be leaders, creators, and storytellers.

We are excited to share how we use technology and AI to help us learn, talk to each other, and support our classmates. We recently had the opportunity to speak on a big keynote stage at a national conference with our Technology Director, Alana Winnick, and we were really proud to be part of that experience!

In this podcast episode, Cammie and Olga discuss their experiences and insights on global education, highlighting disparities and innovations across different regions. The conversation covers the challenges faced by educators in rural and under-resourced areas, with Cammie sharing her experiences from Canada and Olga from Chile. They delve into the differences in educational technology availability, such as the lack of one-to-one devices in less affluent areas, and the creative ways teachers adapt to these limitations, such as using smartphones and offline resources. The role of educators is examined, emphasizing their creativity and resilience in providing education regardless of available resources. The duo also touches on the importance of understanding global educational contexts and the need for educational tech companies to develop mobile and offline resources to better serve less connected regions. Lastly, they explore the varying dynamics between teachers, students, and stakeholders across different cultures, before transitioning to share inspiring educational stories from around the world.

Escuchando con el corazón. Empatiza, Innova y Sana.
En esta sesión conocerás cómo los principios de Narrative 4 - escucha activa, curiosidad, imaginación y acción positiva - toman vida mediante prácticas sencillas que pueden replicarse fácilmente en diferentes experiencias de aprendizaje. El objetivo es usar el poder de la tradición oral, "storytelling", para crear conexiones humanas profundas que nacen de la empatía, crecen con la compasión y se materializan en interacciones diarias, propias de una comunidad de aprendizaje con un alto nivel de seguridad psicológica, que promueve la innovación y el desarrollo de proyectos de impacto social.

About Perla Zamora
Program Coordinator at Narrative 4 México. Perla Zamora is a dedicated mother of two and a distinguished Mexican educator with over 25 years of experience in private education, where she has made a significant impact. She serves as the program coordinator at Narrative 4 Mexico and thrives as an independent educational consultant, instructional coach, and public speaker. Perla holds a Master’s Degree in Science from SUNY Buffalo and has extensive experience guiding children, young people, and teachers to enhance their teaching and learning experiences. Her dedication to quality education is evident in her promotion of the ethical use of technology and positive human connections. Her contributions have earned her the prestigious ISTE “20 to Watch 2024” award, recognizing her outstanding influence in the field. In her personal life, Perla enjoys reading, playing gameboards, and cooking, believing that these activities are powerful tools for learning. She also values relaxation and social connections, which she considers essential for a healthy and balanced approach to education. Perla loves spending time at the beach and organizing small gatherings at home, viewing them as opportunities to foster community and connection. 

About Maru Castañeda
Originaria de Tampico, Tamaulipas, México, Maru Castañeda, es una líder educativa con más de 30 años de trayectoria y un profundo compromiso con el servicio comunitario. Directora de Operaciones de Narrative 4 México y pionera de la primera generación de Master Practitioners, posee maestrías por la Universidad de Buffalo (NY) y la Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas. Hace seis años, lideró con éxito la implementación integral del modelo N4 desde preescolar hasta preparatoria, consolidando además un vibrante grupo de estudiantes embajadores. Hoy, combina su experiencia en Relaciones Públicas y Comunicación Educativa para transformar comunidades a través de la empatía radical.

Changemakers: From “Can I?” to “Watch Me!”
What happens when we stop leading for students and start leading with them? In this session, we’ll explore how student agency—fueled by voice, choice, and ownership—can spark powerful, real-world action. Through classroom experiences and the PYP Exhibition, we’ll examine how learners grow into confident changemakers when they’re trusted to take the lead—shifting from “Can I?” to “Watch me!” Participants will leave with practical strategies, SDG connections, and ideas to turn everyday learning into a launchpad for impact. Together, we’ll explore how to build classrooms where agency isn’t an add-on—it’s the engine.

About Berna Aslan

Berna Aslan is a dreamer, curious learner, maker, gamer, and teacher trainer. She has been an English teacher at various levels since 2006 and has spent the past 8 years as an IB/PYP teacher. Berna is a lifelong learner who believes in the power of mistakes. Her passion for technology and games has led her to complete numerous programs, earning titles such as Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert, Google Educator, and Apple Professional Learning Specialist. As a Global Schools advocate, she works on integrating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the curriculum. Her teaching and research interests include educational technologies, education for sustainable development, material development, climate education, gamification, game-based learning, inquiry-based learning, storytelling, social-emotional learning, visible thinking strategies, problem-solving, critical and creative thinking skills, differentiation, and growth mindset. 

In 2019, she delivered a TEDx talk titled “Oyun Virüsü Yükleniyor | Loading Game Virus,” exploring the power of play, curiosity, and learning culture in schools. Berna was also a finalist in the Global Agents of Change category for the She Inspires Awards 2025. She is especially proud of her student-led projects and PYP Exhibition processes, including recent global collaborations such as The Rights of Every Child, where students’ voices were elevated through shared storytelling and action beyond the classroom.

Gaming for Good: Turning Student Stories into Global Impact
In a world where global challenges often feel overwhelming, how can we empower students to transform their stories into meaningful action? This session explores “Gaming for Good," an innovative approach that combines storytelling and game-based learning to elevate youth voices and foster global impact. Participants will discover how students can design avatars, choose realms of change, such as climate, equality, and education, and collaborate across borders to turn awareness into action. Through real-world and in-game challenges, learners build eco-portfolios, share reflections, and create visible impact, making their lived experiences central to global problem-solving. Join me to reimagine schools as spaces where stories become catalysts for dignity, equity, and connection worldwide.

About Namya Joshi
Namya Joshi is a changemaker and is currently studying at JAMK University of Applied Sciences, Jyväskylä, Finland. As the official Minecraft Student Ambassador by Microsoft, passionate about using STEM, game-based learning, and technology for social good. Driven by her motto #EachOneTeachTen, she has spent the past six years designing and delivering free coding and digital skills workshops for over 20,000 teachers and students, especially girls, across India and globally. She has also mentored young changemakers to start their own coding clubs and lead impactful projects in their communities.

One of her most notable achievements is designing game-based learning projects using Minecraft to address global challenges, earning her prestigious honors such as the Pradhanmantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar, Diana Award, and recognition as a Global Student Prize Top 50 Finalist. Namya continues to advocate for youth voice and innovation through international platforms like UNESCO, ISTE, Bett, and EduTech Asia.

Global Connection: A Catalyst for Literacy
The traditional definition of literacy is undergoing a radical shift. In a world increasingly mediated by technology and Artificial Intelligence, literacy is no longer just a solo act of reading and writing. It is a collaborative, cross-border competency.

This session aims to showcase that when students connect with peers across the globe, the "audience" for

their work becomes real rather than theoretical. This shift in audience serves as a powerful catalyst for linguistic precision, cultural empathy, and creative expression.

About Ella Obianuju
By integrating safe tech platforms with global collaborative standards, we demonstrate a model where students—regardless of their zip code—use technology in a responsible and ethical way in their learning journeys and contribute to a global narrative.

The Joy of Reading: Elevating Human Stories Through Literacy and Reader Identity
Around the world, learners enter classrooms carrying stories shaped by culture, identity, migration, language, and lived experience. Yet too often, their reading identities—their histories with books, literacy, and belonging—remain invisible. This session explores how The Joy of Reading initiative, developed in an Adult Basic Education program in rural Saskatchewan, creates classroom spaces where reading becomes an act of dignity, connection, and identity-building for learners of all ages.

Rooted in the belief that you can’t catch a love of reading from someone who doesn’t have it, this work centers joy, accessibility, personalization, and human connection as core components of literacy. Through daily reading routines, culturally responsive book selection, choice‑based independent reading, and authentic conversations about literature, students begin discovering and reclaiming their own stories as readers. Many of these learners arrive with fractured reading histories—shaped by school struggles, interrupted education, linguistic barriers, or trauma. Story-conscious literacy practices help them articulate these histories, rewrite them, and recognize their voices as valuable.

This session shares practical strategies for designing joyful, human-centered reading environments that elevate student stories while fostering global understanding. Participants will see how initiatives such as book-matching, classroom libraries curated for inclusivity, family literacy practices, and community reading culture can transform classrooms into story-rich spaces where learners connect not just to texts, but to themselves and to one another across borders.

About Kara Frey
Kara Frey is an Adult Basic Education instructor in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, where she teaches English, Indigenous Studies, and History with a strong focus on literacy. Passionate about cultivating lifelong readers, she leads The Joy of Reading initiative—creating inclusive, choice-based reading environments that honor the lived experiences and identities of her learners. Kara is a Book Love Foundation Grant recipient and a strong advocate for accessible, joyful literacy practices. She is especially proud of her work building culturally responsive classroom libraries and fostering reading identities among adult learners who are rediscovering their confidence and stories through books.

Empowering Every Young Person to be a 'Culture Agent'
This session explores what it means to be a Culture Agent and how we can empower every young person to find out more about their own, and others’ cultural and linguistic identities, as engaged global citizens. It looks at how Culture Agents authentically foster students’ understanding of cultural diversity as an important part of their own developing identities, through age-appropriate story-driven content, that centers young people as ‘Culture Agents’ on secret missions to ultimately defeat the Xenophobe team. Participants will examine why identity and belonging work is more essential than ever, unpack common misconceptions and resistance, and reflect on what it truly means to be a “culture agent” in today’s world. Drawing on frameworks such as the cultural iceberg and intersectional identity mapping, the session introduces practical, creative activities—from “Human Library” storytelling to local community interviews, that help students move beyond tokenistic symbols and flags toward meaningful engagement with difference, empathy, and belonging. It will be underpinned with the essential place that storytelling has in both the empowerment that comes from sharing cultural and linguistic identities, as well as the respect, empathy and intercultural skills that come from listening to others’ stories.

About Lottie Dowling
Lottie Dowling has worked in education and schools for over 25 years as an educator and professional learning leader on a global, national and regional levels and is the CEO of Culture Agents. She has run networks of schools with educators working on pedagogical change and whole school improvement, facilitated PL in a range of topics linked to Global Competence; Intercultural understanding, student action projects, as well as designs student programs and materials that support Student Voice and Agency in these topics. 

She supports a number of organisations who work with schools in Global Citizenship Education, such as; Asia Education Foundation, University of Melbourne, Inspire Citizens and Compass Education and presents at conferences regularly. She is a real-life culture agent herself, having lived and worked globally in education for many years. She believes in the transformative power of education to support young people to create and co-design a better world for everyone. https://cultureagents.com/

About Josh Halpern

Josh Halpern is a former U.S. diplomat, global educator, and entrepreneur whose work has taken him across China, Spain, India, England, Central America, the Caribbean, and the United States. Throughout his career, he has helped build bridges across cultures through education, storytelling, entrepreneurship, and global engagement. He began as a drama and English teacher in England, advised students in Spain for the Fulbright Commission, founded IdiomArts to teach language through the performing arts, managed education programs in Central America for Georgetown University, developed cross-cultural curriculum for at-risk youth, led strategic development for an educational tourism company in Beijing, and served as VP at education investment firm in Mumbai.

He later returned to the United States to help launch the Obama Administration’s U.S. Department of Commerce eCommerce Innovation Lab and then resigned to found the Getting to Global Initiative, a public-private partnership helping small businesses expand internationally through digital trade, with support from five government agencies across three continents and funding from Google, Facebook (now Meta), eBay, and other cross-border technology leaders.

Josh is the creator of Culture Agents and co-founder of Beijing Improv, the first bilingual improv theater troupe in Beijing. It was there that he met Lottie Dowling, who went on to shape the academic backbone of the Culture Agents program.

He holds an MBA from INSEAD, an EMBA from Tsinghua University, a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a TEFL certificate from Cambridge University. He also hosts the VanBassador series, sharing stories of how a global mindset can shape careers and enrich lives.

Slow Stories in a Fast World: Teaching Global Empathy Through Observation
In a world of fast consumption and instant interpretation, this session invites educators to slow down. Drawing on slow-looking and visual thinking strategies, the session explores how deliberate observation and reflective storytelling can deepen student engagement, foster empathy, and support ethical encounters with stories from diverse cultural and global contexts.

Participants will experience practical classroom routines that use images, art, and visual prompts to help learners observe carefully, suspend judgment, and construct meaning over time. Through real classroom examples from primary and teacher education settings, the session demonstrates how slow storytelling encourages curiosity, resists stereotypes, and transforms storytelling into a shared process of inquiry rather than a performative task. The session offers adaptable strategies for educators seeking to cultivate meaningful global connections while honoring the complexity of human stories.

About Marcela Cecilia Danowski
Marcela Cecilia Danowski is an English educator, teacher trainer, and educational consultant based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with over twenty years of experience across primary, tertiary, and teacher education contexts. She is a speaking examiner, conference presenter, and contributor to academic journals, with a strong focus on visual thinking strategies, inquiry-based learning, and ethical uses of technology in education. Marcela is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Neuropedagogy and is particularly proud of her work designing and implementing slow-looking and visual thinking projects that foster deep engagement, empathy, and global awareness in diverse classroom settings.

Narrative Justice: Combating Dominant Narratives Through Counterstorytelling
Dominant cultural narratives have long shaped how historically marginalized students and communities are perceived and portrayed within educational spaces, often perpetuating stereotypes and erasing diverse perspectives. Grounded in the tradition of counterstorytelling, this presentation provides educators with tools to critically examine dominant narratives embedded in curriculum, pedagogy, and school culture. Participants will explore the power of counterstories, which are personal and collective narratives that challenge stereotypes and affirm the complexity of historically marginalized student identities. 

Through case studies, reflective discussions, and hands-on activities, educators will learn how to incorporate counterstories into their teaching practices to create more inclusive, identity-affirming learning environments. This presentation emphasizes the importance of centering students' lived experiences, fostering critical thinking, and empowering students to craft and share their own stories. By disrupting dominant narratives and embedding counterstories into their work, educators can build classroom spaces that celebrate diversity, promote equity, and support all students in developing a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.

About Kwame Sarfo-Mensah
Kwame Sarfo-Mensah is the founder of Identity Talk Consulting, LLC, a global educational consulting firm that specializes in developing K-12 teachers into identity-affirming educators. Rooted in the core values of equity, empowerment, and authenticity, Identity Talk Consulting, LLC provides a range of professional learning experiences, including keynote speaking, virtual and in-person trainings, leadership consulting, and e-courses, to help educators sharpen their cultural responsiveness and anti-bias, anti-racist (ABAR) practices. 

Over the course of his 17-year education career, Mr. Sarfo-Mensah has worked as a classroom teacher, author, consultant, and speaker across the United States, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Zambia. Internationally, he has delivered high-impact workshops and keynotes for organizations such as the Association of International Educators and Leaders of Color (AIELOC), International Schools Services (ISS), The Education Collaborative for International Schools (ECIS), Ghana ASCD, Diverse Educators, and SENIA. Currently, Mr. Sarfo-Mensah serves as the Senior Leadership Advisor at Lusaka Oaktree School here in Lusaka.

His latest book, Learning to Relearn: Supporting Identity in a Culturally Affirming Classroom, recently received the 2025 IPPY Gold Medal for Best Education Commentary Book and the 2024 Foreword INDIES Gold Award for Best Education Book, further cementing his status as a thought leader in culturally responsive education.

Social Studies That Develops Critical Thinkers Beyond The Single Story
This session examines how Arab American history is often marginalized, oversimplified, or erased in K–12 social studies—and why that absence matters. Through an inquiry-based lens, participants will explore how single narratives shape student understanding of identity, history, and power. Educators will engage with strategies to surface missing voices, challenge stereotypes, and design learning experiences that foster critical thinking, historical empathy, and civic awareness. Participants will leave with practical tools and classroom-ready ideas to intentionally integrate Arab American histories and move beyond the single story.

About Kwame Sarfo-Mensah
Abeer Ramadan-Shinnawi, M.Ed., is a Palestinian-American educator and founder of Altair Education Consulting, where she partners with schools and organizations globally to design culturally responsive, inquiry-based learning. Drawing on over two decades in classrooms, district leadership, and international professional development, her work centers missing and marginalized narratives—particularly Arab and Muslim histories—within global and social studies education. Abeer supports educators in cultivating critical thinking, belonging, and global citizenship through curriculum, storytelling, and community-rooted practice.