Portrait of a Young Global Citizen

By Wayne Russell

Meet Andrew, a 13 year young man. When I first met him he was four turning five. We met in Shanghai, China: He a kindergarten student, I his teacher. Now Andrew is about to enter 8th grade. With the help of technology and a relationship with his parents I have stayed in touch. What motivated me to write this piece is two-fold. One, I am excited to reunite with Andrew and his family this summer (His family still lives in Shanghai). Two, his mother recently posted a short video clip of him playing his ukulele (He also plays the piano and guitar very well).

When I think of Andrew, I think "global citizen." Andrew was born in the United States and then at the age of three he and his family relocated to China. During their stay in Asia, Andrew has also lived in Vietnam for one and a half years. While is Vietnam Andrew became fluent in Vietnamese, a language that has two more tones than Chinese's four. In addition to his Chinese being pretty good, he is currently learning a fourth language, Tagalog. Tagalog is spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines.

One day Andrew will enter the workforce with a number of competitive skills. He will not only speak more than his mother tongue, English, but he will be well experienced in working with people from all around the world (He attends a quasi-international school with classmates from many different countries). Andrew will know how to communicate with people with vastly different cultural and family backgrounds and will be able to work through problems when perspectives are night and day.

Andrew will be a well-prepared and competitive citizen in our ever-expanding global economy. I look forward to following one of our future leaders.

Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours.

Cheers!

My Personal Statement

Image credit: idfpr.com

By Wayne Russell
11/30/2011

Hope is weaved throughout my story. I trace the beginning of my ethos of hope to an overseas trip my parents sacrificially saved for. When I was eleven years old I left the Southern Hemisphere for a six-week ‘field trip’ through Europe, the United States and Canada. It was a trip of a lifetime for a small town boy from Africa. The world was officially opened for exploration. If my parents did not show me a world beyond my own, I would have never known that there was more to hope for. My life experiences have made me passionate about giving students experiences beyond their world to convince them that possibilities are endless.

As a child my parents always encouraged me to dream big and to look beyond my current situation. This was powerfully modeled by my parents a few years after taking our six-week ‘field trip’: My father faced unemployment for two and a half years. Throughout this difficult period my parents remained positive and kept looking upward and onwards. Hope for a better future was our daily medicine.

As I approached my high school graduation my parents encouraged me to aim high. My dream was to travel overseas to attend college. I knew this would be no easy feat and would require determination and grit. My parents were unable to financially support an international college education, but they fully supported my big thinking. We planned numerous fundraising activities before my departure. These included garage sales, in which we received the full support of our community with families contributing all their unwanted goods; late-night vanilla fudge-making for friends; and my favorite, an all-out country and western dance and dinner in which ticket sales went towards my overseas college education.

Once I arrived in the U.S. for college I immediately began working and continued working through all my undergraduate and graduate studies. I took full advantage of summer, fall, winter, and spring breaks to work extra hours. I continued to apply what I learned throughout my childhood: hard work and determination. I was the first in my family to graduate from college. Hope mixed with hard work and determination is a recipe for making the impossible possible.