In partnership with parents and the community, we are preparing students to be active and responsible global citizens. We are acutely aware of the immensity of this responsibility. Rather than shy away from it, we choose to embrace it; evidenced by our mission statement.
"Committed to excellence in and out of the classroom, the CCHS community believes that it is our mission to inspire our students from Concord, Carlisle, and Boston to strive for and meet high levels of academic and personal achievement. We believe that the respectful, supportive and engaging learning environment at CCHS instills intellectual curiosity, a passion for learning as well as an understanding of one’s role in the local community and in a diverse global society. "
Through studying world languages and religions, through researching different customs and cultures, through academic research and engaging classroom discussions, through international and domestic travel, we strive to lift globalization from engaging classroom rhetoric to authentic, multi-cultural experiences.
Nowhere is this more evident than our Global Literacy Certificate (GLC) program created by our dedicated and talented World Language Department.
Read on to learn more about the GLC program at CCHS, and to meet the 2016 student recipients.
Global Literacy Program
World Language Department
The Global Literacy Certificate program at CCHS is designed to foster global and cross-cultural awareness in high school students. It aims to support CCHS students in acquiring a forward-looking global perspective. The main goal of this program is to better support students in gaining cultural competence in order to contribute to, and participate in, an increasingly connected and globalized world. Studies have shown that improving cultural competence, combined with the study of world languages, promotes cross-cultural understanding and the ability to think globally while students reflect on, and gain a better understanding of their culture.
The Global Literacy Certificate program at CCHS is designed to foster global and cross-cultural awareness in high school students. It aims to support CCHS students in acquiring a forward-looking global perspective. The main goal of this program is to better support students in gaining cultural competence in order to contribute to, and participate in, an increasingly connected and globalized world. Studies have shown that improving cultural competence, combined with the study of world languages, promotes cross-cultural understanding and the ability to think globally while students reflect on, and gain a better understanding of their culture.
The Global Literacy Certificate recipients understand that being linguistically and culturally competent are necessary skills for communicating effectively with people across geographic, cultural and language divides. In addition, they have a deep appreciation and regard for diversity and the ability to interact respectfully with others, at home and around the world.
Based on their interests, students can choose to participate in the program and complete the requirements necessary to earn the Global Literacy Certificate (GLC). These include volunteering for at least 25 hours in a culture different from their own and completing 3 years of language study at the high school level.
Global Literacy Certificate Recipients 2016
Mark Behnam; Deedy Chang; Alden Harring; Zaina Huseni; David Jiang; Mia Royce;
Kasey Stewart; Benny Thomas; & Emma Walker.
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Emma Walker
CCHS YOG 2017
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Languages: Enrolled in Spanish AP and French 4H
I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities to help while learning about communities other than my own. I appreciate receiving this certificate from the Global Literacy Program as a recognition of my learning from other cultures. I think interacting directly with people of cultures different from my own enriches your understanding of the world and yourself. From my experiences I have found that communication and cultural engagement create new perspectives and friendships. I look forward to continuing on this path of global citizenship.
Deedy Chang
CCHS YOG 2017
Languages: Mandarin and enrolled in Latin 4
In the summer of 2015, I hopped on a plane to Taiwan to explore my family roots. I traveled to different cities in Taiwan and dedicated my volunteer services to a joint restaurant-bakery where I had the opportunity to interact with an amazing staff and customers. I spent most of my time making desserts with the head baker.
While I was in Taiwan, I also had the opportunity to volunteer in the National Museum of Natural Science in the city of Taichung. I drew side profiles/diagrams of archaeological pottery remains and had a great time talking with the staff of the anthropology department. While I was in Taiwan, I taught English informally to several friends, family, and co-workers.
As a Carlisle resident, especially one who doesn’t get many chances to travel, it’s easy for me to forget that another world exists outside of the rural suburbs. Taiwan was a much-needed reminder of human diversity and gave me a renewed sense of pride and respect for not just my culture, but others as well. As for my cultural experiences back home, I’m involved with Carlisle’s Multicultural Festival (originally an annual Chinese New Year Festival). This is a town-wide festival that celebrates Carlisle’s hidden diversity. My role is to help with the preparation process leading up to the day of the event and to host the performance. To be able to interact with and help communities of different cultures is a humbling experience and a push for a more open mind.
Benny Thomas
CCHS YOG 2017
Languages: Haitian Creole and enrolled in French AP
Living in Boston, I found that there were not many opportunities to play soccer. Luckily, I was able to find a club in East Boston and play my favorite sport. Through that club, I was provided the opportunity to perform community service in that neighborhood, which is not where I reside. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made. I was able to work with kids from different backgrounds and different countries in South America. I facilitated several soccer clinics for kids to play and have fun. I helped clean up a field at a middle school in East Boston, allowing the kids to have a safe and environmentally friendly space to play soccer. In addition,we painted the boundary lines, the halfway lines, the “18” and the goalie’s box.
As a group, we decided to make a bigger impact on the community so we decided to host a block party. I was involved behind the scenes making phone calls and organizing the event to make it run smoothly. At this event, people from the East Boston Hispanic community brought specialties from their respective countries and shared it with everyone. Working with people from different backgrounds has helped me understand how important it is to learn and appreciate other people’s culture and how, through a sport, we can make so many connections and much impact.
Alden Harring
CCHS YOG 2018
Enrolled in Spanish 4H
In April of my freshman year, I was fortunate enough to go on the Youth Group Mission Trip with TriCon Church. Roughly 65 members of the youth group traveled to Catadupa, in the mountains of Jamaica to help build school houses, playgrounds, walls, latrines, and other much-needed structures. For a week, we slept on the floor of the Christian Fellowship Church and showered under a large drainage pipe waterfall. While we certainly didn’t have the comforts of home, this trip was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had.
My group in particular was building a playground and prepping for the construction of a new room at the Cambridge Christian Fellowship Church School. The whole time we were working, the students at the school were in classes. Even though we didn’t get to see the project from start to finish, it was so powerful to see and interact with the children who would be directly benefitting from our work. Despite the language barrier –most people spoke an English-Spanish dialect with a heavy Jamaican accent– we were still able to form relationships with the children. This included dancing during our lunch breaks, piggy-back rides, and letting them take pictures with our cameras while wearing a variety of our hats, sunglasses, and bandanas. Even though we were outsiders in every sense of the word, we were still welcomed with open arms and treated with the best that they had to offer. Now back at home, I continue to have much closer relationships with the other members who went on the trip with me as well as a better perspective on other cultures and the privileges I enjoy every day.
David Jiang
CCHS YOG 2018
Languages: Mandarin and enrolled in Spanish AP
In the summer of freshman year, I hopped on a plane to visit cousins in San Antonio, the last place in the world I would expect to have an international experience. Yet, underneath the surface of the stars and stripes patriotism of Texas, there is a thriving Latin American community, many from the border towns of McAllen and Laredo, that I had the great pleasure and privilege of working and living with while I was a volunteer counselor at CAMP Camp, an establishment for children with a variety of disabilities to have the best “summer camp” experience.
Many of the children as well as the counselors were Latino, which made for a great opportunity to utilize Spanish, as we laughed, talked, ate, and sang. At CAMP Camp, it seemed as if the generally laborious work of moving the CAMPERs to and from their wheelchairs, administering medication or feeding tubes, or helping the cooks in the kitchen, was a breeze. The scorching hot Texas desert days were nothing as we accompanied our “CAMPERS” to and from activities like horseback riding, canoeing, archery, or swimming for fourteen hour days. Despite my dream of travelling the world, I now realize that one does not need to go far from home to experience another culture, which is crucial to help understand one’s own.
Growing up in a household that speaks Mandarin on a daily basis, foreign languages already take a large part in my life. I have always been interested in studying geography, history, and world cultures on own. Last April, I embarked on the school’s Ecuador Exchange trip, living with a host family in Quito and visiting the countryside and Galápagos archipelago. This year I am taking AP Spanish, which I hope can contribute to my desire to travel the entirety of South America sometime in the near future. I am also a leader of the UNICEF club, which fundraised money for the Ecuador earthquake and Haitian hurricane. In summation, all of these experiences substantially expanded my worldview and opened my eyes to this wonderfully diverse, multi-faceted, and complex globe we live in. I am incredibly grateful for receiving this certificate, not only as recognition for broadening my current worldview philosophy, but also as motivation to continue my development to becoming an informed, culturally caring, global citizen.
Mia Royce
CCHS YOG 2017
Enrolled in Spanish AP
Two summers ago I volunteered in the sugar cane plantation communities in the Dominican Republic where I helped create and run a summer camp. I have been attending summer camp my entire life, and before returning to my own camp to be a counselor, I decided to share my greatest passion with the beautiful children of Los Bayetes. Coming from areas of intense rural poverty, the kids would count the days all year until camp would begin. The camp was a safe and loving environment which provided the kids with electricity, running water, hot meals, first aid, English education, sports, art supplies, and the undivided attention of devoted counselors.
The children enrolled in the camp are some of the poorest in the world. Attendance is considered the highest privilege for the village’s children as our director equated the week of our camp with a week of “Disneyland on steroids” by American standards. The camp proved to the kids that they are worthy of special attention, that they are loved, that they have not been forgotten by the rest of the world. I think a special aspect of the camp was that not only that we were able to offer palpable help and service to our campers and their community, but that we were also able to support them emotionally by creating real relationships. Unlike other forms of service such as philanthropy, working at a food drive, or even cleaning up a beach, volunteering at a camp allows you to form deep, meaningful connections with those being helped.
As a photographer, I made it my duty to capture the faces, the personalities, and the beauty of the children of Los Bayetes. It is important for us, especially living in this CCHS bubble, to recognize that there are other people living on this planet, with other stories to tell, and other perspectives to share. I hope that my photography forces viewers to recognize and celebrate the different stories of our diverse world. I use my images to ignite dialogues and spark questions concerning the human condition; by having these conversations, we can better understand how to improve lives and change policies to achieve a healthier global human existence.
Zaina Husen
CCHS YOG 2017
Languages: Hindi and enrolled in French AP
Over the summer I had an amazing opportunity to volunteer at an organization which helped women become financially independent and learn to create their own businesses in India. Having lived in India for four years when I was younger and living in a household that speaks Hindi, communication was not a problem, but the rural areas I was volunteering at were places I had never been exposed to until then.
Every day I would wake up early and drive to a different village with my designated volunteer from Gujarat Livelihood Promotion, the organization I was working with. My basic responsibilities were to collect and file paperwork for each women at each group I visited as well as teach them how to use a bank machine, but throughout that I learned about the lives of the people of each village I went to. I met many women from various groups and learned about the difficulty of starting their own businesses and earning money for themselves when they had other responsibilities such as raising their children, looking after their farms, and lack of transport. Many of the women who I collected signatures didn’t have enough education to write their own names, signing with their fingerprint instead, a moment that made me realize how even basic education can improve a woman’s life. I also had the opportunity to go the bank and talk with associates who helped set up and monitor each woman’s account, learning about information such as government loans and interest rates.
Besides learning more about my own culture in India, I am currently taking AP French and am learning a lot about different francophone cultures throughout the world, which has helped expand my knowledge on different cultures, something I have always been interested in.
Kasey Stewart
CCHS YOG 2018
Enrolled in Spanish 4H
In 2015, I went on a 16-day trip that opened my eyes to different worlds and to different needs people have around the world. With twelve fellow students and three supervisors from my former school, I traveled to Peru with a group called World Challenge. This trip put my language skills to the test. It also tested and broadened my view and appreciation of different cultures, and it forced our group to think about our responsibilities as citizens of a larger world.
Before we left, I created a supply drive called “Pencils for Peru” where fellow travelers and I collected school supplies that we carried to Peru in our backpacks to distribute to a local school there. We landed in Lima, Peru, then traveled to Puno, one of the poorest cities in Peru. We bought supplies in Puno to help paint local buildings being developed into village hostels. Our trip also included planned service projects along the shores of Lake Titicaca where we helped local villagers with their harvests and with the care for their animals. We delivered our “Pencils for Peru” school supplies to local schools, and it was gratifying to see how needed they were, and that they would be put to such good use.
One part of the trip also tested our endurance. During one 5-day segment of the trip, we hiked the Salkantay Trek, often at altitudes above 13,000 feet. As satisfying as that accomplishment was, nothing was more satisfying than using my language skills to connect with local Peruvians to understand their needs and to provide help. When our trip began, I was elected to be our group’s Spanish translator. I spoke with local citizens in different towns and villages – from local hostel owners, to rural village farmers. It felt liberating to be able to communicate with so many people halfway around the world. It felt good to learn that, with a little hard work, we can all contribute to making the world a better place.
Mark Behnam
CCHS YOG 2018
Languages: German and enrolled in Spanish 4
I completed my volunteer requirement for the Global Literacy Certificate in Germany. There I was a counselor and teacher at a Christian summer camp for three years after having already participated as a camper myself. The camp runs from 1-6pm but the typical day for a counselor is from 12-8pm. As a counselor it was my responsibility to lead an activity which was a sports activity group for the older children. This meant that everyday the games had to be prepared and planned for the next day as well as making sure the materials for the current day were ready as well. Then everyday for a little over two hours myself and another counselor had to lead the kids in the activity and make sure everyone is safe. Additionally to that, when the activity time is over, I had to help teach the message of the day to a little bible study group in the form of a little reading and a few activities.
This past summer was especially memorable though because, in addition to all my responsibilities, I also had to translate for one specific camper. The camper was an Iranian boy visiting his grandmother in Germany for the summer. He spoke Arabic and very little English but no German. And so as I mentioned I translated for him. He was paired with me and would go with me to all activities including the sports group. Because I speak English as well as German fluently I was able to communicate all the necessary instructions to him and make sure that he was having just as much fun and learning as the other German children.
I am extremely grateful to be in a position where I can give back and spend time volunteering and recommend to anyone who is interested to pursue it. Working at the camp made volunteering that much easier because working alongside a group of dedicated volunteers who are giving up their summer days to watch over and teach children is very inspirational. The camp taught me how to work together with other volunteers who are interested and dedicated and showed me the importance of continuing to volunteer as well as just showed me how fun and important teaching is. The camp also reminded me of the importance of staying globally connected and continuing to practice my languages and learn about new cultures by having to translate for the one Arabic speaking camper. If I had not been fluent in both languages, his time at the camp would not have been as fun and he would not have felt included.
