Just as so many of my colleagues in the teaching profession, I see it as my personal responsibility to widen my students' horizon: To give them an idea of what the English speaking world is like, in all its variety.
Same but different, could be the leading mantra as we open up our laptops to take a roadtrip that will take us all of Secondary school to complete. Enabled by the seemingly endless possibilities of information technology, we work our way through English speaking cultures such as England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well as the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Not to forget cultures such as South Africa or India, in which, due their colonial past, English is an official language.
Education is in many ways about enlightenment. In this case, it is about the enlightenment of our students to understand that other people in other countries may perceive the world differently. People here and there measure their lives not by the same, but by different yardsticks. And, ultimately, that this is just what we have in common.