Middle school aged students at Fraser Woods Montessori School surrounded a table set up with a map of the world and game pieces on Wednesday, January 14, to discuss a current world issue.

Responding to the January 7 killings at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine offices in Paris, students were charged with focusing on free speech and its importance by creating their own political drawings.

As the school year continues, the students are presented with more world problems to discuss and/or solve in the form of a “Global Game,” thought up by head of humanities and Dean of the Middle School Wendy Musk.

The students meet once a week with Ms Musk, who presents different challenges, problems, and puzzles for the students to solve together.

The middle schoolers are divided into groups to represent countries or areas of the world in order to play the game.

By the end of the school year, Ms Musk explained, the Global Game is considered complete if each problem is solved or significant efforts have been made to better the issue, all the fictional countries must have treaties with one another, and/or each fictional nation has to be better off than it was at the start of the game.

Ms Musk first rolled out her Global Game last school year, and last year’s students were able to end the 2013-14 academic year with full treaties across the board.

“I want them to have this feeling of camaraderie,” said Ms Musk of the lessons the game teaches the students.

Ms Musk said she wanted to prepare her students for what she sees as a “century of collaboration.” Some of the inspirations for the game that Ms Musk described included coming up with a way to connect students to each other, to connect them with world problem solvers, and to world challenges. She also said she wanted to come up with a way to “amplify their love of geography.” In addition she said the game is a safe way to empower her students to discuss world events while encouraging solutions.

Past world problems the students have been presented with include solving world hunger or finding a way to provide safe education across the world. One solution students came up with to provide safe education, Ms Musk said, dreamt up an underground school in Pakistan for girls.

The start of this school year had students tangling with the issues of global warming and the concept of carbon footprints, according to Ms Musk.

The most important thing about the game, Ms Musk said, is its intention, to create a global perspective for the students, which she said aligns with Fraser Woods Montessori School’s mission statement.

“The Global Game was inspired by our students’ avid interest in current events and geography,” a description for the game reads. “At its heart, is the core belief that authentic communication and creative empowerment is not only beautiful and vital for the holistic development of students, but for the future of the world.”

In the game students are also tasked with a wide variety of issues or things to juggle, like defense spending, creating bank notes and summaries, dealing with the weather, and earning rewards cards.

Middle school, Ms Musk said, is a pivotal time that can inform the rest of a student’s life with their voice and morals.

“It’s a very powerful time,” she said, as her students worked in groups to create drawings based on some of the images that became like slogans following the killings at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.

To inspire the students, Ms Musk presented them first with some of the cartoons and images that were created in the wake of the event, like one of a little girl with a drawing explaining that she too is a cartoonist or another of a boy saying that in due time he too would be a journalist and he is not afraid.

Students worked in groups for 20 minutes to create their own political cartoons, using powerful images to make a point.

After working together, the student groups had a representative share each drawing with the full group. One drawing depicted people holding pencils with the words “Je suis Charlie,” which the representative described as representing all the people saying they believe in the freedom of expression.

Another drawing shared with the group showed words like freedom and education balanced on the tip of a pencil.

One drawing depicted a “pencil tree” that also had a broken pencil next to it with a sapling growing out of it.

Another showed a pencil broken in half with the scraps of the pencil forming the words “Je suis Charlie.”

Ms Musk ended the day’s lesson by telling her students that she hoped they would take the power of the written word into the rest of their day.