FEATURE: CULTURAL EDUCATION
How to successfully encourage celebrating cultural and national similarities and differences within the classroom
Embracing and celebrating cultural and national similarities and differences within the educational environment not only enriches the learning experience but also cultivates a sense of inclusivity and respect among students. By exploring the practical strategies and approaches that educators can undertake to create a welcoming space for various cultures, empowered educators can inspire students to celebrate their own cultural heritage while fostering a respectful understanding of others.
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n our second set of features this month we turn to cultural education. In the first feature on this important and sometimes overlooked topic Dan Coleman, Head of English as an Additional Language at Royal Hospital School in Ipswich, offers his thoughts and advice on encouraging and celebrating cultural and national similarities and differences in the classroom.
As the world of education becomes increasingly globalised, classrooms are filled with students from diverse cultures and nationalities.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggests that the language you speak colours your view of the world. In my experience as a learner and a teacher of languages, your language’s structure does shape what you will find difficult when learning other languages. English has four ways of referring to the past. It can be difficult to get to grips with the differences between went, was going, had gone and had been going. We can even use the present tense to refer to the past (I have been to Spain) and we have no official future tense, despite having many different present forms to talk about it, depending on whether we think it is certain to happen or a vague prediction, or whether it’s in our diary or on a timetable. Some languages have no tenses at all. So, your language must colour the way you view time. It even affects numbers and the way you count. I started my career in Slovakia, with the experience of embracing a different culture and being “the Englishman”, it helped me to
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understand the experience of minority pupils at RHS.
For many international students, this may be the first time in their lives they have moved away from home, often without the language prowess or cultural awareness necessary to make friends quickly. However, there is so much interaction at RHS between pupils from across the world, especially in the boarding houses and on the sports field. There is a genuine curiosity towards the international pupils, and while the questions might sometimes reveal an initial lack of knowledge, that is often quickly rectified by the interaction itself.
So, what can be done to encourage students to celebrate cultural differences sensitively? The following are strategies which have worked at RHS, where we have pupils from 28 different countries.
Increase global awareness
To help increase the knowledge levels, we embarked on a whole year of global awareness, with pupils involved in creating a global outlook magazine. The culmination of this was a whole school event, where our international pupils from nearly 30 nations, covering every continent, stationed themselves across the school grounds, with a world map that was superimposed onto a map of the school. The other pupils raced around the school, collecting stamps from each nation if they were able to answer questions about the
December 2023
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