I didn’t know much about global citizenship growing up. I grew up in a rural area in which pretty much everyone happened to be of the same race and celebrated the same cultural traditions.

As a child, I did not fly on a plane to go on family vacations with my parents and siblings. Since my childhood was also before the internet was a thing, I didn’t know much about other countries unless I heard about them on the news (usually in a negative light), read about them in an encyclopedia or learned about them in school. That was my extent of global citizenship knowledge. I didn’t see myself as being part of anything outside of the community I was growing up in.