Young Spirits - Connecting Classrooms
As in many other families today, our family is a combination of different cultures blending into one. All three of us were born in Germany. One of us, Oliver, grew up in the USA and thus adds different yet valuable perspectives to the family mix and the “German” point of view.
Among Nele’s peers we find a great degree of diversity, as well, in which some of her classmates from school and daycare have Turkish roots, others have South-African roots, Ukrainian roots, Italian or French roots. Each of these provide a unique way of perceiving the world and the interactions with others.
As Management Trainers, Silke and Oliver work with teams within companies that have equally diverse backgrounds. It is our experience, that most of the conflicts and misunderstandings within teams arise from this diversity, both interpersonal and intercultural. As trainers, we are often asked to intervene and to help the teams to understand their differences and to see their diversity as an opportunity rather than a burden.
As a result, we often hear phrases like “if I had only known this sooner! A lot of heartache and frustration could have been avoided if I had only understood others’ points of view and known how to build bridges to them earlier.”
This is where our idea comes in:
To start early! To begin to develop this so very essential part of life as early as possible: the ability to understand each other and to start building patterns of understanding (language and diversity), self-reflection, empathy, and widening perspectives.
To start at an age where we humans are still open, curious and trusting, so we have the ability to build strong bridges around the world. This could be the foundation of living in a world where even more people seek solutions rather than delve on difference of opinions, where people have faith and show courage in their ability to handle diversity civilly, and where power comes from a thoughtful, clear, and respectful interaction with others and from an open and trusting heart within.
The world is growing closer together and at tremendous speed. We are constantly connected to each other through Facebook, Twitter and other social media. It seems that for the future generations the world is going to be a combination of many colors, values and points of views. We feel that it is becoming ever more important to understand the human beings behind the differing points of views, to understand how they live, how they grow, to understand their beliefs and learn to respect the differences in point of view so that each may get a clearer perspective of the whole. We hope that young generations will use the opportunities of our time to build many bridges amongst each other to make the world a better place to live in. And the sooner we start, the sooner we will achieve!
That is why we want to connect the classrooms of the world, to learn, grow and appreciate each other.
Our motto:
Connecting Classrooms – Connecting the World
If you are interested in Connecting Classrooms and would like to be one of the classrooms thus connected, please write us under info(at)sybest.de.