People say everything is bigger in Texas, so they’ve obviously heard about the larger-than-life personality of Harriton’s newest Texan, Mr. Warren. His current students know him as an enthusiastic, unconventional instructor with an obvious passion for teaching and traveling. On an ordinary day in room 111 or 112, you’ll find him teaching Honors and CP African/Asian Studies to freshmen through thought-provoking readings, exciting videos, and personal stories from his travels to over 40 countries. The Harriton Banner was honored to learn more about him.
Coming from his previous job at Austin High School in Texas, people told Mr.Warren to “keep dreaming!” in terms of getting the coveted job at Harriton. Despite not being a Pennsylvanian, he was pretty sure that he would make the cut because of his extensive qualifications.
Mr. Warren has received a degree in South Asian studies from Duke University and won teaching awards, as well as a Fulbright Scholarship to study minorities in China. One of his most notable achievements is collaborating with other Austin High teachers to start the Academy for Global Studies at Austin High (AGS). This school focuses on preparing students to be global citizens of the 21st century, incorporating language, global issues and perspectives, technology, and travel outside the classroom.
The Academy for Global Studies is one of his favorite accomplishments. “I enjoyed going to school every day,” he recalls. “Leaving Texas wasn’t that hard, leaving school was hard. I had really built up a lot of positive experiences there.”
Mr. Warren had taught for eight years at Austin High. In his first four years, he taught World Geography at regular Austin High, and in the next four years he and other teachers started the Academy for Global Studies with a grant from the Gates Foundation, in which he taught Pre-AP Human Geography.
The AGS was housed in the same building as the regular high school. However, the curriculum was significantly different in AGS. Mr. Warren comments, “I wanted to support students’ ability to think critically and to become what I refer to as global citizens. That’s the most powerful skill that you can have as a member of the 21st century.”
Students applied through lottery and there were no admission requirements other than interest in the program. Projects were heavily interdisciplinary, with components from multiple subjects and a focus on global issues. And, of course, the most exciting part was the traveling. Students and teachers took mandatory trips during the school year to areas that, if not outside the country, were at least outside Texas.
But it wasn’t all about sunbathing and lazing away – travel was combined with learning. “Learning started in the classroom and then carried over into the trips. Students kept journals, designed and then completed service projects, and then implemented advocacy projects when they returned to Austin, to make a local impact.” Days of the trips were jam-packed with fun and educational activities, like bungee jumping and mountain biking in New Zealand, walking tours of nearly every city they visited, and of course trying as much local food as possible!
These qualifications also make for great teaching tools – just consider a lesson on Chinese culture. Everyone is used to having a teacher subject his or her students to a dry, boring lecture straight from the textbook, so they’ll be pleased to hear that Mr. Warren could show them slides of his visits to Chinese temples and share funny stories about the local cuisine and people.
Similarly, a crucial quality of teachers of African/Asian Studies is to be able to teach from a non-European perspective. Some Western teachings imply that Western civilizations are superior to non-Western civilizations, but a teacher who has experienced these countries is able to provide a less biased interpretation. Despite being told sarcastically to keep dreaming, Mr. Warren kept dreaming and succeeded – he got the job at Harriton.
An important value of Mr. Warren’s that he has carried from AGS to Harriton is cultural relativism, which is judging people on the basis of their own culture, and not assuming that one’s own ways are best. For example, how many of you would cringe at the thought of eating black scorpions? Would you immediately think, “That’s disgusting!” and judge that Chinese eating habit as repulsive? Apparently in China, black scorpions are a delicacy – “It’s kind of crunchy… Tastes like burnt popcorn.” Mr. Warren strives to teach students, using his personal experiences, that people should keep an open mind and not judge. Many of the trips and classroom lessons in AGS incorporated the value of cultural relativism.
In the inaugural year of AGS, Mr. Warren and other teachers sent freshman students to a simulated village experience on a ranch owned by Heifer International in Arkansas. Heifer International empowers poor families to raise themselves out of their poverty and hunger by giving them animals appropriate to their area. For five days, the students in the Arkansas simulation had to live without running water and electricity, care for the Heifer animals, and cook their food over a fire, guided by the staff of Heifer International. It was a special learning opportunity and a favorite memory for many students, who realized how comfortable their lives were compared to the lives of many people living in poverty.
The next year, students took a ten-day trip to Costa Rica. They lived with the native Bri Bri people, visited an organic coffee plantation, which was a supplier for Whole Foods, and saw a dormant volcano. Service projects, which varied from year to year, were also involved in the trip, from mowing lawns and translating documents to designing and painting murals. In this way, students could use their talents to help others and have a great time doing it.
The program continued to strive for interdisciplinary collaboration during its third and fourth years, though it became difficult due to the fact that students were beginning to specialize in favorite subjects or take extra remedial classes, and were no longer all taking the same classes.
Nevertheless, junior and senior year, there were two more trips – one to Washington, D.C., complementing the juniors’ study of American history; the other to Turkey, complementing senior studies of Turkish literature. The first senior class of the Academy for Global Studies in Austin High graduated last year.
While students and teachers enjoyed the mandatory school trips, more options were also available in the summer, when students’ families were welcome to come along on journeys that lasted two to three weeks. All in all, Mr. Warren and his students visited over 15 countries with the combination of summer and school year trips, making lasting memories and eye-opening discoveries about the world and what it means to truly be a global citizen.
Luckily for us at Harriton, Mr. Warren is hoping to create a travel group in the next few years! Just like at AGS, summer trips will not be exclusive to freshmen, but will be open to all students and teachers, and their parents if they so desire. Looking into the future, Mr. Warren says, “I’m interested in going to Africa or South America and incorporating some service elements into our trip, as well as seeing the sights, going to the museums, and enjoying a healthy dose of local culture.”
Will there be another AGS in the works? “At some point in my teaching career, I would love to create another Global Studies program. But Harriton already has a globally themed, integrated and rigorous program in IB. I don’t think that there would be room for both IB and Global Studies to exist side by side in the same building.”
Even while Mr. Warren is not teaching, he still loves to travel, and has visited over 40 countries (including his AGS trips, which were about a third of the total). Though the number is impressive, he says that it’s more about the experience. He likes to spend at least a couple days to a few weeks in each country – “The longer you can stay in a place, the better. It enables me to truly get to know a place – it’s one thing to visit as a tourist, but it’s another thing to actually live there.”
In college, he spent a semester and most of a summer abroad in India, living in a village where no one spoke English, without running water and electricity. “It’s amazing – I went knowing nothing and I came back knowing how to read, write and speak Hindi pretty well. You had to know all the basics and then some. I became adopted by the village – I learned to eat with my hands, and learned how to deal with the village dogs when they attack you walking home from a friends’ house!”
One might wonder how exactly this passionate world traveler came to be a teacher. “Part of the reason I chose to be a teacher is that it’s a tough job. To be a great teacher is one of the most challenging jobs there is. To inspire young people and bring your best every day – it’s the hardest thing you can do, and it’s a challenge that I enjoy.”
Originally, Mr. Warren worked in the finance department of Sun Microsystems, a computer company, as part of ‘Corporate America’. He felt that the job prepared him, in a way, for being a teacher – it was a high-pressure, results-based, high-income job. But he was constantly working, even during his vacations, and never had time to enjoy it.
During the summer for many years, he took time off to work at Outward Bound, a program teaching students how to survive in the wilderness. He loved to climb anything and everything, and he found a position where he was paid to guide students on the climbs.
Though he enjoyed the activity, he also discovered that he loved working with young people because they made him laugh a lot and kept him feeling young, too. He got a master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Colorado State, found a job at Austin High – and the rest is history.
For more information on the Academy for Global Studies program at Austin High, visit agsaustin.org.
(Mr. Warren could only recall some of the countries they visited, but it is still a sizable list: Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Turkey, Greece, Costa Rica, and Mexico!)
