Global Citizen
Ryan
Ryan's
Story
"The first time I traveled out of the country was to Bogota for a Round Square conference. We went to different places in the city and stayed with a host family for a week. That alone was an important experience for me, leaving the country and not being with family. I met a lot of people I never thought I’d meet. I made friends I’m still friends with and picked up some Spanish.
I like that Round Square focuses on meeting people and global citizenship as a whole. I think that it’s important in the world we live in today to be a global citizen. It’s great that there’s a connection between all these schools. We’re really lucky to have these opportunities to learn new things away from the usual school setting.
Traveling generates empathy. You learn about people you don’t know and are really separated from your own life. You’re able to learn about their lives and empathize with the challenges they face. They empathize with the challenges you face. It creates a stronger global community. Making those connections now helps to make greater change later.
I asked my mom why she’s allowing me to go to Colombia. Her view is that anything can happen anywhere and that shouldn’t stop you from experiencing the rest of the world."
- Ryan is also interested in:
- Community Service
Chad Detloff Global Programs Director
On Ryan
"Ryan was new in ninth grade. Almost immediately, I could feel her magnetism toward learning beyond the classroom. As a ninth-grader that’s already quite unusual — that students are self-aware enough to think they want to travel. Ryan’s trajectory these last four years has revealed her Round Square motto: there’s more in you than you know. She encapsulates that beautifully. She was immediately a leader in the program.
When I think about the core competencies, she excels in all of them. She’s a leader who knows how to step into different versions of herself depending on what’s needed. She understands that you can be a global citizen without traveling around the world. She’s inspiring to everyone. She’s inspiring to me. She showed me paths that students at Chadwick could take that I hadn’t even considered before. She’s enriched the opportunities we might be able to provide in the future because of the path she’s carved out for herself.
The overarching goal of the Upper School global programs is that we really want students to have the chance to try out different versions of global citizenship, some through travel and some closer to home. Connecting to outdoor ed, community service and the classroom is a very important part of our program. We want them to see themselves as citizens of this bigger interconnected world. In the past 5 years, we’ve committed broadly to Chadwick International and our mission statement. We’ve attracted so many globally-minded faculty members who are immediately infusing global education into their classrooms in really thoughtful ways."