Our Work

Our evidence based principles (Cultivating Connections, Promoting Active Learning Through Inquiry, Fostering Knowledge-to-Action, and Reflecting and Adapting) are grounded in robust research that supports their fidelity and efficacy. Education scholars and practitioners have empirically studied and witnessed, in the classroom, the integral role these principles play for student success. Costa & Kallick for example, highlight the effects of reflection on making active linkages between taught knowledge and experiences students have in everyday life (2008).

Our coaching model is also well supported by research. Frazier highlights evidence on the impact of instructional coaching on teacher competency and student success. In this particular study, both educator and student growth data shows coaching to have a statistically significant positive effect (2018). All these components and more come together in World Savvy models such as Comprehensive School Partnerships, Leadership Cohorts, Educator Workshops, and Changemaker Hubs.

Global competence is not an initiative. Instead, it is an organizing framework under which multiple goals that exist inside districts and schools can fit – things like social emotional learning, project-based learning, equity work, and career readiness. World Savvy supports school leaders and educators to use global competence as a way to make meaning out of seemingly disconnected initiatives so that everyone can accomplish their goals. Our work makes things easier for people, not harder.

Our pricing is determined by the scope of services provided, and is responsive to the size and needs of the school or district. We have mechanisms in place to support schools who are deeply committed to adopting this work or partnering with us but who may lack the resources to engage fully.

World Savvy believes our work is for everyone. We partner with public, private, independent, and charter schools in urban, suburban, and rural areas. We partner across the K-12 spectrum in all grade levels and subject areas.

At World Savvy, we’re on a mission to educate and engage youth to learn, work, and thrive as responsible global citizens. Using our Comprehensive School Partnership model, we work to shift away from traditional rote teaching and learning, to active, engaged, student-directed learning built around tackling real-world, globally relevant issues in solidarity with community.

To do this, our Comprehensive School Partnership leverages educator and school rubrics as a way for our Professional Learning Facilitators to formatively assess, monitor, and communicate progress toward our four evidence-based principles: Cultivating Connections, Active Learning through Inquiry, Knowledge-to-Action, and Reflecting and Adapting. Through the integration of these principles in tandem with the Global Competence Matrix, teachers, students, staff, and the school community develop a shared language and methodology of competency-based learning.

The success of our work is measured in a variety of ways. As this work is primarily one of culture change, we leverage a variety of both formal and informal indicators to measure success. Informally, we look for all members of the school community to adopt, embed, and live the global competence matrix, centering the values, attitudes, skills, and behaviors in all aspects of school culture. More formally, World Savvy conducts quantitative and qualitative data collection over the course of the 3-year Comprehensive School Partnership and tracks changes in educators and students over time. Some tools we use to measure success include surveys, focus groups, 1:1 interviews, case studies, and observations.

Learning rooted in the pedagogies and philosophies of World Savvy and the International Baccalaureate (IB) complement each other in many ways. Both emphasize reflection, global citizenship, and pedagogical practices that include teaching through inquiry and experiential learning, and education as a vehicle for equitable, just societies at many scales. Both emphasize the significance of student agency, the social construction of knowledge, conceptual understanding that transcends the recall of static information, the critical need for students to engage with globally significant issues at school, the shift of educators from holders of knowledge to facilitators of learning, and that there should be a profile of a graduate as a globally minded citizen and not just a transcript as students emerge out into the broad, post-K-12 world.

There are differences in our program models as well. The primary difference is the implementation methodology and systems of support that World Savvy programs provide to bring this vision to life.

World Savvy’s approach is customized, providing multi-year professional learning and support for whole school communities including, but not limited to individual educators and school leaders, while IB provides predetermined workshops for individuals from schools.

To ensure a shift from theory to practice, World Savvy provides ongoing coaching for educators 6-8 hours per year plus workshops at the school for 3 consecutive years, while IB requires that at least one member of a subject area attend a non customized 2.5-day workshop once every seven years when a new IB curriculum is released.

World Savvy provides extensive pedagogical tools and support for teaching for global competence and for supporting educators and students in cultivating skills in reflection, while IB tells educators and students to reflect and teach through inquiry but provides minimal support on how to accomplish a learning community rooted in reflection and inquiry.

World Savvy provides frameworks and coaching that equip teachers to bring the IB core to life, nurturing students’ conceptual understanding and building transferable skills. World Savvy’s Inquiry, Design, and Knowledge-to-Action processes integrate the IB learner profile and guide students to co-construct knowledge, transforming students’ awareness of themselves and the world as they engage in informed individual and collective action, making the world more just, equitable, and peaceful.

If you are interested in this work but do not feel ready to commit to an in-depth partnership, we suggest a district leadership cohort. This work provides the time and space to think about the moves you can and need to make inside your district to ensure that all students develop the essential skills we know they need. It is a perfect lead up to a Comprehensive School Partnerships and will lay the groundwork for school leaders and educators to get the most out of our work.