In this article the author discusses some of the approaches that she takes in challenging student teachers to understand education in global context, rather than in a decontextualised or instrumental way. These approaches draw on the author's experience of being an educator from the 'global South' (the Caribbean) now working in the 'global North' (Australia). As the first black teacher that most Australian student teachers have encountered in their entire education, the author finds that she can offer them provocative educational narratives and questions stemming from a lifetime career in education, studying and working in various roles in schools, colleges, universities and ministries of education in Jamaica, Grenada, Hong Kong, the UK, the USA and Australia. The author sets out to disrupt the preconceptions of her students as a starting point in a collective journey of thinking differently about education.[Copyright of Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2011.581513]