What is Global Studies?

My experiences have challenged me to engage in discussions with peers, adults, guest speakers who have different opinions and background from my own. It has required me to think critically, creatively, and discover aspects and angles of situations I wouldn’t have considered, and to reflect how these situations impact me and the world at large. It has encouraged me to demonstrate community engagement by participating in events in the context of our classroom and in the world. 
I’ve realized that learning goes beyond the boundaries of a classroom, textbooks and website research. This past year, I’ve attended and participated in eight events, and engaged in numerous speaker presentations, some in subjects that I initially might have not been drawn or interested in, and found there is a lot I am not aware of, simply because I’ve had no exposure to it through my upbringing. The  events and lecture topics were, The Band’s Visit musical, observing a Jewish service at a local Synagogue, performances and presentations on Cambodian genocide and Cambodia Living Arts, visit to the Palestine Museum-US, Photo Wonders Forum, Watkinson’s Social Justice Day, and Syrian Cooking; a range of speakers like, Arjun Kapur-National and International Affairs, Jake Harpern-Journalist, Tarek Sakanda- Artist, Richard Brown- Human Rights, Shindo Yoshin- Islam, and Dr. Bilal Sekou- University of Hartford Professor. The exposure and range of all of these topics and events has deepened my knowledge and increased my multicultural competence and helped me develop empathy towards people and situations.