Genesis at the Crossroads* proposes that the most effective response to these challenges is to launch a Chicago-based Academy for Global Leadership for high school age students in Chicago, San Diego, and the world, to complement those cities’ commitment to being truly global ones. A review of high schools in both the Chicago and San Diego metropolitan areas make this niche evident …there are simply not enough schools and none that promote the integrated curricula that define the core of our Genesis Academy for Global Leadership.
Even if new public high schools are built, they would have to follow the standardized formats that do not enhance creativity and cross-cultural learning, and furthermore, do not fully incorporate arts-educators. The Genesis Academy for Global Leadership, expressly designed as a boarding school, integrates American students from a diverse array of communities nationwide with students recruited internationally to effectively be part of a stimulating and personally engaging educational environment. This focus on 360-degree learning, with its emphasis on both the process and content of the living-learning environment, would allow students with a broad range of skills, personalities, and ambitions to create their niche and thrive. Each student would find and define their own level and style of leadership, broadening their common awareness of this concept with a greater consciousness to promote creativity, encourage personal growth, resolve conflict, and recognize the value of individual and team learning and achievement.
We envision the Genesis Academy for Global Leadership curricula as an educational venue nested inside a campus with other arts, education, and human rights/social justice organizations to work together and take the collective work to the policy level as an accelerator for systemic transformation of intractable urban and societal ills. It will also serve an incubator/lab for academic research and studies on creative education through linkages with universities and learning centers in the Chicago metropolitan area and the nation. Among the many benefits of this partnership, would be to document the value and impact of this creative educational approach and to create modules that could be introduced into other learning and service environments in person and via online curricular offerings. In addition, the Academy will make available opportunities for global teacher training and provide a new platform for innovative pilot programs and scalable expansion – an epicenter for an educational movement.
As a participant in the Clinton Global Initiative, the Genesis Academy for Global Leadership has been configured as a scalable model for global peace education
creating 120 jobs, 25 of which are green (Sternberg’s CGI Commitment)
