The two successive meetings at the NAIS Conference in 1995 included an hour-long session on Global Perspectives and, in 1996, a three-hour Workshop on "Building Internationalism in Independent Schools: How Can We Learn From Each other?," which was chaired by the author and included speakers from schools in Botswana and Japan, as well as the U. S. Those in attendance, some forty (40) representatives from national and international schools, drew up a list of priorities and desired opportunities for enhancing global communications and collaborations. What, for example, might a school in Kenya such as the Starehe Boys Centre and Educational Institute have to share with the rest of the world's school population on community service? As it turns out, a great deal.

Over the ensuing months and thanks to the commitment and invitation of two schools in an unlikely region of the world, Southern Africa, a concept and an objective began to take shape. St. Stithians in Randburg, South Africa and Maru a Pula in Gaborone, Botswana offered to host and support the follow-on meeting. The latter, a national school with transnational interests, was led by a South African Rhodes Scholar and the former, an independent school of significant academic and athletic reputation in the Johannesburg area with a Head who was both sensitive and responsive to the needs for educational transformations within his country. Thus was the concept of the International School Leaders Seminar on Global Connections born.

Forty-one (41) School Leaders from ten (10) countries participated in Global Connections I, of which eight were from local Government institutions. The objectives of the Seminar were:

• To learn about educational transformations currently underway in South Africa from representatives of both government and non-government schools and to visit a selection of township, farm, and independent schools within the region.
• To share information on uses of technology and identify ways in which it could enhance learning globally.
• To identify opportunities for interchanges of academic staff both short and long term and in disciplines in which both categories might be useful and appropriate.
• To focus not only on the variety and importance of community service but also to encourage its implementation on a transnational basis, and, finally,
• To seek out ways in which more collaborative initiatives could be undertaken between advantaged and less-advantaged schools nationally, regionally and internationally.

Two immediate results of these objectives were the establishment of a South African group called "Zwelibansi" (Zulu for wide or broad world), which continues to meet regularly and which now provides an educational as well as cultural bridge between a number of area independent and township schools for purposes of teacher training, student exchanges, curricula planning and uses of information technology. As one of the Southern Africa hosts wrote following the Seminar,

"The variety of participants that you assembled was astonishing. More astonishing, perhaps was the way in which three distinct groups melded so well. The Heads of privileged South African schools learned a great deal from their colleagues in lesser endowed township schools and the international group was a breath of fresh air which was able to blow a healing balm from one group of South Africans to the other."²

Another of the participants put it more broadly:

"I believe that this Seminar laid the groundwork for the development of an important consortium of International educators. Through our schools' commitment to community service and environmental education, and our commitment to work in partnership with other schools to assist with resources, encourage teacher continuing education, and implement student/staff exchanges, we can enrich the education programs at schools around the world."³

The second important outcome was the unanimous agreement to hold a second Seminar -- Global Connections II -- in 1998 with the understanding that a multi-national representation be continued and that, insofar as possible, funding be found to involve representatives from less advantaged schools. Both requirements were fulfilled. Hosted by Geelong Grammar School and SCECGS/Redlands in Australia, 58 School Leaders from 12 countries attended and assistance was provided for representatives from England, Kenya, and South Africa.

Global Connections II furthered the outcomes of the initial International School Leaders Seminar in several ways: not only did it alter perceptions and cause school leaders to rethink their educational positions, it also opened up greater options for school-to-school initiatives worldwide. For example, as one participant wrote,

"I came to Australia enamored of the American prep school educational model. . . I left the country, however, deeply appreciative of the good work in education that is being done in other countries and willing to reconsider my own views on a previously unthinkable level. In Australia, I saw schools which are committed to "education" in a wide sense, with more attention given to experiential education, community service, and the fine arts."⁴

Another participant, the Principal of an Australian Government school, commented on internationalism and the demonstrable effects resulting from the Seminar. "While our school has, by Government school standards, a very extensive international program," he wrote,

"I particularly enjoyed the session. . . identifying the characteristics of international education and the many and varied opportunities that exist for the promotion of internationalism in our schools. I found much value in discussing with other Principals our vision for the future direction of internationalism. The different perspectives of the application of the same ideal was most enlightening. . . To that end I have commenced negotiations with Ellen Kondowe (the Principal) from Letsibogo Girls High School in Soweto to provide a scholarship for one or two of her girls to attend our school in 1999. We have produced a video of our school that has an African girl on exchange from Zimbabwe providing the narration from an African perspective. We hope this video will reduce the anxiety of possible applicants."⁵

And, finally, as a third participant noted, "I was particularly encouraged and inspired by the discussion on equity in education. Those of us in advantaged circumstances really do have a responsibility to support those less fortunate and thus bring the young people in our care closer together and provide them with a better understanding of the world in which they live. It must benefit our wider communities when our students become more sensitive to the needs of others and have a clearer understanding of the cultures in which our people live."

These are vignettes only, but they also serve as examples of both the breadth of exchanges among and between the participants as well as the depth of the initiatives which have followed each of the Seminars.

Of equal importance is the collective awareness of the need to address critical areas of educational leadership worldwide and the realization that this must be achieved through collaborative and creative initiatives, better understanding of global demographics, and their impact upon elementary and secondary education, and a greater appreciation for the importance of teacher training, of role models and what the school of tomorrow may provide.

The impact of these meetings on individual schools is reflected in the following comments by the Principal of Maru a Pula School in Botswana who has attended the NAIS Workshop and both Seminars. As he writes: "I believe fresh impetus has been given to Maru a Pula and to my leadership of the school This type of outcome can not be quantified, but is perhaps the most significant of all."

• I am now in a position to offer colleagues at Maru a Pula the wonderful opportunity of a novel type of Sabbatical or Study Leave. Throughout these three meetings I have pushed a proposal that now allows teachers to visit Global Connections schools for short stays of about a week. At no cost to the visitor, and little to the host school, an enormous amount can be gained. The visitor sees another school and education system in operation and contributes to teaching and other activities in the host school If a teacher under this scheme is away for just one term, he or she could visit half a dozen or more schools in different parts of the globe for the cost of a single air ticket.
• I had the real pleasure of showing off Maru a Pula and its bush campus for environmental education to nine international professional colleagues. It is not often that one gets the chance to entertain such an interesting delegation at one's school.
• As the result of two visits from the Deputy Head of Deerfield Academy and my visit there, a grade 12 scholarship has been established for a Maru a Pula graduate. The first recipient of this award is studying at Deerfield now; the second begins in September. Deerfield has sent to Botswana one teacher aide and three basketball coaches who ran a highly successful clinic for aspiring basketballers throughout Botswana over three weeks in August last year. This event was sponsored by Spalding International. Furthermore, the Chair of their Science Department visited the bush campus in June 1997 and plans are under way to send a faculty member with students in the near future.
• An historic but dormant link between Maru a Pula and the Hill School in Pennsylvania was revived through the attendance of the Deputy Head at the South Africa meeting. Maru a Pula plans to send a scholarship student to Hill in September and Hill is planning to bring a a faculty couple and five students to the bush campus this June.
• Maru a Pula has forged strong links with the Round Square group of schools through the presence of the Round Square Director at the South Africa and Botswana meeting in 1997 and again in Australia in 1998. Three Round Square teachers have visited Maru a Pula and member schools have all been informed of the developments at the bush campus. Some have already contracted to send students there this year and next. I was invited to attend the Round Square conference in Newcastle last September partly in order to talk about this exciting venture in hands-on environmental and conservation education.

These are some of the links that have already been forged. Others in the pipeline involve the Starehe Boys' School in Nairobi, the Geelong Grammar School in Melbourne, St. Stithians and Letsibogo in Randburg and Soweto, and a number of Australian schools following on from the meetings in Geelong and Sydney in March this year."