Aaron Moniz is the co-founder, director, and lead facilitator of Inspire Citizens which started in 2018. Aaron grew up in a small town in Canada and then moved to Abu Dhabi and experienced diversity and interculturalism first-hand. He focuses on social issues, human rights, anti-racism and anti-homophobia, environmentalism, animal rights, etc. through Punk.

What is Your WHY NOW 

My WHY is to make sure that as many students and families around the world get to engage with global issues, develop empathy for people and the planet, and use their learning to be able to take action, at any time.  My WHY is to inspire as many people as possible to believe that taking action to make a difference is always an option and that our collective agency can help shape the world.  

I do this by dedicating myself to global citizenship education and by working with students, educators, school leaders, school stakeholders, and community partners around the globe to build systems based on sustainable development and global citizenship education.  

EMPATHY to IMPACT: Understanding and enacting this process has the power to positively influence everything. 

Share about Your Education and How You Became a Teacher

I started in a very different place than I ended up. My academic and professional career began with a desire to do good and influence the world positively through politics. I quickly learned that Political Science was not the right field, but I fell in love with Psychology. I completed my Bachelor of Science in Psychology specializing in Buddhism and Psychology and Minors in Political Science and English Literature. I was enthralled by mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, Buddhism and psychoanalysis, and all the wisdom around using the mind to heal the mind. I felt compelled to investigate how creating the right conditions might help people reach their full potential and make wise decisions so the world is a better place. This whole experience taught me that at 20 years old, I was not ready to go into clinical psychology. The best way for me to help minds reach their full potential while also being an advocate for inclusion was to go into psychology and education. So my journey began as an intern in a special education department of an international school in Casablanca, Morocco. Within the first week of my experience, a teacher had to leave, I was asked to step in and support an 8th-grade math class and that was it. I was hooked on the beauty of education, and the puzzle of helping students to reach their full potential.  

After this, I decided to do 3 more concurrent degrees in education while teaching full-time. I was able to complete my B.Ed and M.Ed with The College of New Jersey. After being promoted to the head of learning support, EAL, Remedial Reading, and Talented and Gifted, I sought further professional certification in Special Education virtually at the University of Victoria during the year and summers.  

Developing Inclusive Education and Experiential Learning

While developing my skillset in inclusive education, I started getting more involved in experiential learning, service learning with Berber populations in the High Atlas Mountains, and partnering with local NGOs like Corps Africa to link community development projects to Talented and Gifted projects,