Global education is a broad term that encompasses several curricular and instructional components at Mariposa. Overlapping with Mariposa's emphasis on social communication and other components include: Environmental and Outdoor Education, World Studies, Foreign Language, and Community Outreach.

Environmental and Outdoor Education: At Mariposa our students are inundated by an awareness of our impact on the environment in which we live. Recycling is a campus-wide effort and discussions about reduced-trash lunches and snacks are had regularly as our students eat in their classrooms with their teachers. Our school gardens include compost areas and vermi-culture in which students understand first-hand the relationship between the products they use and its relationship with the earth. Student art materials are also made from natural resources such as beeswax crayons and natural die watercolor paint. Each classroom has a nature table which displays items from the environment that change with the seasons. The kindergaren tends a small organic garden near their play yard while the grades  maintain crops on a larger scale in their classroom planter boxes,  located in a garden adjacent to our fruit tree orchard. 

Mariposa has founded a partnership with the Mountains Recreation Conservation Authority (MRCA) and was originally funded by a grant from the City of Calabasas. This year, the program will be funded by our parents. Naturalists from the MRCA come to our classrooms once per month to teach hands-on lessons about nature and the environment. The lesson is followed up on a different day with a full-day hike and outdoor activities in the Santa Monica Mountains. Other outdoor education field trips and assemblies also take place throughout the year.

Foreign Language: Students in grades 1 through 7 receive instruction in Spanish 4 days per week for 15-minute periods. The Spanish program is an oral language program and is based on the natural approach to language acquisition as outlined in "The Natural Approach" by Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell. The program is based on 2 primary components. The first is the idea that comprehension precedes production, i.e., listening precedes speaking, reading or writing. We do not expect a baby to speak for some time, and certainly not to read or write. We do, however, repeat words frequently to him so he may hear and learn them. In accordance with these principles of research-based language instruction, our Spanish lessons are oral, repetitive and are being used to transmit messages. (Example: "Touch your nose and your mouth."). The second component is the idea that language instruction should be presented in a low anxiety environment where students are allowed to make errors are not forced to speak before they are ready. As such, lessons are interactive and lively. Students are not "tested" on a unit until the group has had plenty of time to hear and learn the words. At that time, students will be tested by being asked to respond physically to verbal messages. Student understanding is documented and reported during the regular report card period.

Community Outreach: It is a priority at Mariposa that students learn compassion and a sense of responsibility for the society they live in. As such students are engaged in learning about ways to help others and participating in community outreach activities. In the past, students participated in Manna Food Drives and Book-Ends in which they collected books and brought them to communities in need. This year our school will partner with a local assisted-living facility in which seniors will visit our school throughout the year and students will have an opportunity to get to know them through various activities such as storytelling, reading books together, and playing games. In addition, students will donate household goods to an organization that finds low-income housing for women and children who have fled abusive homes.