Participants in the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms attend a Global Education Symposium in Washington D.C. where you meet all of the program participants, including those with whom you will be traveling for your international field experience, and also learn about global citizenship through collaborative and informative sessions. You also have time to explore what D.C. has to offer.
Professional dress was encouraged for the symposium, which to me means a jacket. I have a black coat that I wear for orchestra concerts, however, I did not want to wear black. I was fortunate to come upon this navy blue jacket at Zara while last minute shopping for socks and shirts the night before. It goes well with this Tori Richard aloha shirt with ocean wave print. Whenever I travel out of Hawai‘i, I always bring an aloha shirt to wear, showing this cultural symbol with pride. This ocean wave design looks more Japanese to me, and I would like to update my aloha shirt collection with designs, images, and or symbols that are more distinctly Hawaiian, such as native plants or kapa cloth prints. Of course, I would want the garment to be created by a local designer, and ideally in Hawai‘i, but I know that local production is quite expensive compared to overseas production.
When I first saw “One World” upon entering the Alaska Airlines aircraft, I immediately thought about what it means to be a global citizen, and how humans must put their differences aside and work together to solve our global issues. I was certainly excited to learn more about global education in D.C. and still buzzing from all that we learned in the intensive online course about around the topic. How noble of Alaska Airlines to make this statement, I thought. I even made an Instagram post, going off the idea of creating a better world:
Only months later when looking up Alaska Airlines online did I realize “One World” was referring to an airline company alliance. While this was disheartening to learn, I still value the idea of working on a global scale, together as one, while still preserving our unique cultural and societal practices and traditions, and our uniqueness as individuals. The “glocal” idea of how we move from local to global spheres and back shows that the various realms are interconnected and how we can stay committed to all the communities to which we belong.
Uyehara in Uruguay 