First Groton Program for Intercultural Exchange creates community from shared experience

The inaugural Groton Program for Intercultural Exchange (G-PIE) concluded on July 14, after a week of communication, camaraderie, and community building.

“This conference exceeded my expectations,” said Groton Headmaster Temba Maqubela. “It’s my hope that this is the first of many that will come.”

Students and educators from four continents made the trip to Groton for this first G-PIE, including representatives from WLSA Shanghai (China), the Welham Girls School (India), Kigali International School (Rwanda), Maru-a-Pula School (Botswana), Imagine Scholar Program (South Africa), Appleby College (Canada), Cheltenham College (England), Episcopal High School (Virginia), the Webb Schools (California), and our very own Groton School. Students stayed in Groton dormitories under the supervision of young adults, while teachers stayed at the Groton Inn.

Groton Dean of Globalism and Experiential Learning Nishad Das, head of the organizing committee, wanted G-PIE to be built on shared experience. At the end of the week, he was more than pleased with the outcome. 

“My primary goal for this conference was for people from around the world to build relationships and partnerships through sharing their stories and experiences,” he said. “I am thrilled to say that this objective was successfully achieved. Our faculty were enriched by the people they met and students and teachers from around the world were buzzing with excitement at the prospect of keeping this conference alive into future years.” 

First and foremost, G-PIE is a professional development and interdisciplinary learning opportunity for educators and students. The week was organized around the themes of culture, water, and artificial intelligence and technology, with academic workshops and cultural performances set up to explore how different cohorts experienced each. Equally important, however, was the informal interactions, between students and educators alike, that took place organically throughout the week.

According to Theater Director Laurie Sales, one of the conference organizers, that flexibility was intentional.

“While many of us who were involved in the creation, planning, and execution of G-PIE had been to numerous conferences before, none of us had ever put together anything like this ourselves,” she explained. “We had a strong structure with lots of room for flexibility. In fact, one of our learning outcomes was, ‘Participants will practice flexibility and adaptability through communication and collaboration with others, with the intention of achieving shared goals and building empathy.’ So the very fact that we achieved that as a team indicated that we were on the right path!

 

“There was a day when we pivoted from our plans and arranged for all the students to have time to learn Chinese painting techniques from the WLSA students,” Ms. Sales added. “Everyone had seen the painting as a performance the night before so there was a great deal of buy-in and investment. That hour of connection among students was so rich because they had a shared activity and as they learned from each other, they also discussed the choices they had made earlier in the week around a values-based exercise, lessons they gained from an AI speaker, and dreams they had for improving water security in their home communities. It was a truly beautiful scene and I am so honored I got to be a part of it.”

 

Each morning started with breakfast and a walk or rehearsal, before moving on to group discussions and breakout sessions. Afternoons featured lectures on one of the themes, or cultural activities and team-building. Evenings ranged from a keynote speaker to an intercultural arts performance to a dance for students. On Thursday, the group traveled to Boston to explore the city together. Beyond student-centered programming, G-PIE also offered a professional development opportunity for educators to engage in themes through a pedagogical lens. 

In designing the G-PIE experience, the organizing committee—led by Mr. Das and Groton’s new assistant director of globalism and experiential learning, Mary Frances Bannard—collaborated with Duke University Professor Darla Deardorff, the architect of the UNESCO Story Circles methodology. This approach promotes sharing personal narratives and reflecting on others' cultural experiences and identities, fostering dialogue and understanding throughout the week. 

“There were so many small moments where the success of this conference was evident,” said Ms. Sales. “One afternoon [Groton ecology and environmental science teacher] Dr. [David] Black partnered with schools to explore issues of water security in their home communities. I walked in on a robust dialogue among students from Southern California and students from Botswana in which they realized that their home communities face the same ecological climate challenges. One of the teachers pulled up water supply maps for each of these regions and the similarities were obvious, except for the fact that one region is in the most resourced country in the world and the other is not. So the students from the Webb Schools really leaned into the lessons shared by the students from Maru-a-Pula. That was the whole point of the conference: To foster intercultural collaboration toward future problem solving.”

In a time when anyone can video chat with someone on the other side of the globe, organizers agreed that face-to-face, personal contact between participants was essential to the experience, and to G-PIE’s success.

“We have, as humans, really evolved into perfecting our senses,” said Mr. Maqubela. “When I see you and talk to you in person, I feel connected to you. Whereas, when I look at a screen, there’s always that facade, there’s always something missing. In order to be authentic, we wanted to be able to be together in the same space: Eat together, sweat together, and be able to be vulnerable together.” 

Ms. Sales agreed, and said one of her goals for the conference was that young people from all over the world would come together and feel the power of communal joy.

“When it comes to peacekeeping in the world—to protecting our planet from the poisons of overdevelopment, to taking strides toward justice-centered leadership—the opportunity to make and share joy with others, no matter how different their lives and experiences may be, is the first and most important building block,” she said. 

G-PIE was funded through the generosity of a donor family who supported the headmaster’s (GRAIN) Innovation Fund, which assists projects and programming central to the school’s mission. While organizers are hoping to establish a rotation of host schools for any future conferences, Mr. Maqubela said Groton was committed to playing a part in whatever way needed going forward. 

“I think Groton has been at the center—good, bad, or otherwise—of many global moments,” he said. “We seem to be poised, as a school that has people from all continents teaching at Groton, to be the ones to try and experiment with such an ambitious project.”

Besides Mr. Maqubela, G-PIE speakers included Stephen Wolfram, creator of Wolfram Alpha; Rachelle Villalon, founder, CTO, and executive chairman of Hosta AI in Cambridge; and Manjula Salomon, who recently retired as associate head of school at Palmer Trinity School Miami. Mr. Wolfram and Ms. Villalon spoke about artificial intelligence, accompanied by follow-up workshops. With her rich international background, Ms. Salomon shared her intercultural experiences.

Reflecting on the conference as it came to a close, Mr. Maqubela said he would remember the students’ smiling faces and the friendships that were developed over the course of the week. 

“I hope they take up the challenge of reshaping a different globalism,” he said, “that they take it home and say, ‘This is a time for change, a time for oneness, and a time for ubuntu.’ This is my hope.”