It’s Human Rights Day at Shipley. Earlier, another alumna stood on the same stage, addressing Upper School students. “What we’re trying to do with Sesame Street is build a new, more peaceful world,” she tells them. Charlotte Cole ’78 is Vice President of Education and Research for the Sesame Workshop. She oversees the research and curriculum development on the company’s international co-production projects, including adaptations of Sesame Street for different countries and cultures.

By working with educators and production teams throughout the world (most recently in Bangladesh, Egypt, Kosovo, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa), Cole and Sesame Street are teaching children in 140 countries about more than just their ABCs and 123s. Using contextually based curriculum, and culturally resonant characters, the program addresses social issues specific to each country: reducing the stigma of HIV and AIDS in South Africa, improving educational opportunities for young girls in Bangladesh, and teaching tolerance of Arab populations in Israel.

“We’re humanizing the ‘other,’” says Cole. “By starting very young, we hope that we’re building a better world.”

As for Shipley’s Human Rights Day organizers, they hope that, at least for today, students will see that education is more than just homework and heavy books. In eighth grade, students read passages from Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea and talked about how education for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan can help promote peace. Lower School students looked at photographer Joan Klatchko’s pictures of children from around the world. Seventh graders visited other schools in the area. And a panel of eight people working in education provided a range of perspectives for Upper School students.

“Take yourself out of here, and go here” says sixth grade history teacher Peter Stokes, pointing to the United States and then Uganda. The sixth graders sit in a large circle and share answers to questions like: What is the greatest challenge you face in your life? Why is your education important to you? The juxtaposition of their own answers and those of the Brain Tree Students is eye-opening for them. “My education is important,” says one student, “because it changes the way I see the world.”

Change the way students see the world. It’s Human Rights Day at Shipley; and that is exactly what Shipley’s Human Rights Day organizers hoped to do.