Highlands Students Earn Global Competence Certification
05/23/2024










by Señora Laura Proaño
Highlands High School students earned a global competence certification in Señora Proaño’s CHS Spanish IV class by completing the AFS Global Up Americas program including 18 online modules in Spanish and a virtual exchange with a high school in Colombia.
The program explored global topics such as metaphors of culture, stereotypes and generalizations, cultural value dimensions, understanding inequality, skilling up for the future and taking action. Students actively engaged with the curriculum via in-class activities in Spanish, such as acting out role plays to demonstrate preferred communication styles, practicing active listening and empathy and exchanging cultural ideas and experiences with their new friends in Colombia via Zoom and Flip.
AFS calls the program “Global Up” as it builds the “essential and lifelong global power skills needed to live, learn and work in today’s world: collaboration, critical thinking, problem-solving, cross-cultural communication, open-mindedness and flexibility.”
The CHS Spanish IV students will be presented with their physical AFS Global Up Americas certificates at the Senior Awards Ceremony on June 5 in addition to a digital Credly digital badge.
CHS Spanish IV Students:
- Jackson Ament
- Jocelyn Bielak
- Aubrey Coward
- Kaylee Demharter
- Haley Dixon
- Alison Gillette
- Jesse Maloney
- Katelyn Myers
- Lukas Oddis
- Elizabeth Ransom
- Cameron Reigard
- Ella Rittman
- London Salter
- Jocelyn Scardina
- Brooke Signorella
- Connor Watson
We would like to express our gratitude to AFS USA Director of Education and Outreach to Schools Jill Woerner and the rest of the AFS USA team for offering this excellent program to our students and for training Señora Proaño as a certified Global Up Educator. We would also like to thank the Instutitución Educativa Antonio Ricaurte CASD Art Teacher Mrs. Liliana Torres of Colombia for collaborating with us in the virtual exchange. Finally, a special thanks to Highlands parent and AFS volunteer Rachael Ochoa for referring us to this excellent program.