Educator Wellness Podcast · Scanlan Center for School Mental Health, University of Iowa

Embracing Our Differences, Elevating Our Schools Through Global Education

·55 min·3 clips

Will describes a teacher forcing an administrator to confront whether they were asking her to teach fascism and genocide.

1. Educator Wellness Podcast focuses on global education and its connection to educator wellness, student learning, and community well-being. 2. Keri Vogelgesang hosts the conversation, and William Coghill-Berens, Amy Anderson, and Monique Kottman bring multilingual education, rural leadership, and curriculum work to the discussion. 3. The episode asks what global education means in practice and why it matters for educators, students, and school systems. 4. William Coghill-Berens defines globalization as interconnected economic, geopolitical, and sociocultural structures, and he frames global education as preparation for that world. 5. He distinguishes global education from simple international education by emphasizing injustice, wealth inequity, positionality, and social justice across the curriculum. 6. He names the Longview Foundation, the Asia Society, the OECD, and the U.S. Department of Education as frameworks for global skills. 7. He argues that critical global education is not only about personal success but about success for humanity, equitable living, and collective joy. 8. He explicitly connects global education to wellness by describing habitats, histories, identities, and ways of living that elevate more people. 9. Monique Kottman describes teacher preparation at Penn State as her first experience with professors who were not born or educated in the United States. 10. She says those differences showed her education as a global event rather than only an American one. 11. Monique later describes learning with people in Oslo, Norway, outside formal school structures, including meals, walks, and museum conversations. 12. She says those settings made communication possible beyond tourist behavior and beyond purely commercial exchange. 13. Amy Anderson explains the Baker Teacher Leader Center global educator ambassador program as three pillars: global education, teacher wellness, and outdoor education. 14. She says those pillars overlap through the UN sustainability goals, especially clean water, respecting the land, and building a future world. 15. Amy also says time outdoors supports stress reduction and physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health for teachers. 16. She wants those ideas system-wide in school districts rather than treated as isolated experiences. 17. Amy uses Kinsey’s, a rural manufacturer near her school, to show how local communities already connect to Europe, Asia, Russia, and Ukraine. 18. She cites an ISU extension survey in which 81% of farmers reported climate concern, and she ties that to stewardship and land protection. 19. The conversation has an exploratory interview style, with guests building on each other through examples from Iowa, Norway, and classrooms. 20. Listeners interested in educator wellness, multilingual education, and rural school leadership will get the most from it; listeners wanting a short entertainment segment may skip it.

As heard by us

A steady, human conversation about educator wellness, local community, and shared humanity.

This episode treats educator wellness as part of daily life, not a side topic, and ties that idea to rural schools, outdoor education, and the search for local connection.

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Why you'd press play

You want a grounded take on how big ideas in education can start with local community reality.

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