Unraveling the Japanese Experience: Lessons Learned from Lars Nootbaar

Identity is a concept I regularly contemplate.
I often examine what constitutes identity, my own sense of self, and the meaning of being "truly Japanese" or "truly American." As someone with a Japanese mother and an American father who grew up in Japan while receiving an American education at an international school, this subject resonates deeply with me.

Soccer: The Global Language of Sports and
​How It Teaches Valuable Life Lessons

As an educator and soccer coach, I firmly believe that sports have the potential to create a strong bond with students that extends beyond the classroom. Over the past decade and a half, I have been fortunate to work as a coach for various sports including ping-pong, tennis, and soccer, and have witnessed firsthand how athletics can positively impact students both on and off the field. I believe all sports can provide students with valuable lessons. With that said, in particular, soccer offers unique opportunities for students to learn the importance of teamwork, grit and perseverance, and hard-work.

What Zoomers Taught Me: The Great Potential of Asynchronous Collaboration

Despite the numerous challenges COVID brought upon us, I am continually impressed with how the Zoomers have been able to respond to the current crisis. With a new post-Covid normal approaching us in the later 2020s. I hope that our society can learn various ways to incorporate asynchronous communication to help streamline and improve upon work as we know it. 

ChatGPT: Exposing the Need to Re-Evaluate Our Assessment Strategies

The use of AI language models, particularly ChatGPT developed by OpenAI, has generated heated discussions about how to evaluate our students’ writing, with many educators seeing this new technology as a threat. However, simply banning ChatGPT is not a viable option, as it is publicly available and popular among students. Instead, it is important to reconsider assessment methods and ensure they provide students with opportunities to write authentically and critically. While certain shortcuts should be discouraged, ChatGPT could be used to explore and re-evaluate the type of assessments we are providing students.

MUN: From KISJ to the World

The Global Education City Model United Nations (GECMUN) conferences had humble beginnings. The first conference hosted around a hundred students from five school in Korea. Six years later, the conference had grown into one of the primary MUN conferences in Korea, hosting schools from around Asia each year. The growth of the conference has been truly an organic endeavor and a symbol of not only the program and the conferences growth, bu the global mindset of the Global Education Community overall. The conference has changed the landscape of MUN in South Korea. Since its inception in 2014, it introduced crisis committees to the South Korean MUN community. Since then, many of the MUN conferences in Korea have adopted UNA-USA style crisis committees into their MUN programs and conferences.

Teachable Moments Outside of the Classroom 

I am a firm believer in educating students holistically, that the educational process is beyond textbooks and tests, that students' educational opportunities should extend beyond the classroom. Therefore, it is imperative to the students' learning process that I interact with the students beyond the context of the classroom to establish a trusting relationship and a positive rapport. We embark on a journey to learn and grow together.

Zoom MUN in Times of COVID-19
On February 6th, 2020, we had to make the difficult decision to push back GECMUN6, a conference we had spent a year preparing for, from February of 2020 to September of 2020. This meant that the seniors involved with GECMUN6 were going to miss out on the conference.

We still wanted to have some type of conference in the spring as a MUN club and decided that we would have an internal conference at school in mid-April. Under the assumption that the COVID-19 would have passed by then (this was before Italy, before New York, before Iran). Little did we know then that school would be canceled from February 16th through what could potentially be the rest of the year.

The GEC Business Competition Operated Better Online than in Person, Here's Why.

Our DECA club, in conjunction with DECA and/or business clubs with neighboring schools hosted the Global Education City Business Competition I. The competition began in January and had two categories: one for stocks, the other for entrepreneurship (starting your own restaurant).
The plan was that of the 40+ teams, 7 groups for each competition would be selected to present live in front of a group of judges on April 11th.
Due to COVID-19, we had to change the format. Instead, we asked students to email their video presentations to us. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, for it allowed us to have flexibility in several ways.

4 Things To Consider When Starting a New Model UN Conference

This guest article series was written by Nickolas Harris, the Director and founder of the international MUN conference, the Global Education City Model United Nations (GECMUN) conference held on Jeju Island, South Korea. He is also the founder of the San Pedro Sula Conferences (SPSCON) in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He has been coaching MUN for eight years, with experience coaching delegates in the Middle East, Central America, and East Asia, and teaching a MUN elective course at Escuela Internacional Sampedrana and Korea International School, Jeju.