Hello everyone.
This year, I have a new role in my school and I am in charge of helping our students develop their cultural capital, and become global citizens.
If you work in an international school or in a school with the majority of students who have different heritage languages/cultures, we are in similar situations. Hopefully, we’ll be able to exchange ideas here!!
I aim to publish one blog post each month to share how things are going, the challenges I face, and solutions I find.
In this post I'll explain in which context I work so you understand how I will be implementing my different ideas.
Click on the links below to skip straight to the different parts:
1) Who am I?
Please note: I have decided to share my journey on my website. I will therefore NOT mention my school’s name. This is so that I can be completely open about various aspects of the role and what I am trying to accomplish. The aim is to focus on ideas, hopefully give a starting point to schools that would want to do the same.
Who am I?
My name is Yoshito Darmon-Shimamori. Many of you know me as an author writing books to help pre-teens and teens grow up proud of and empowered by their home languages and cultures (Click here to read extracts of my books). Or you might know me as a dad raising his two sons to be multilingual, multicultural, and multi-literate.
I am also a foreign languages teacher in a secondary school in London. And this year, I am wearing a new hat. I am the International Links Co-ordinator. One of my roles is to help our students develop their cultural capital and and become global citizens.
The context of my school:
I work in a secondary school in east London (UK). It is an all-girl state school. The very large majority of our students are from Bangladeshi background, and most of our them hear another language than English at home or by close family members. However, many of them do not speak their home languages at a conversational level.
In our school, there are not that many opportunities for students to engage with their heritage. And although accepted, multilingualism is not actively valued or promoted. As a result, the vast majority don’t seem to see anything special in their heritage languages and cultures.
The only real opportunity students have to learn more about their languages and cultures is through Bengali lessons. At KS3 (from 11 to 14 years old), students can choose to attend an after-school club where they learn to speak, read and write. Many of our students speak the Sylheti dialect (from the region of Sylhet). However, the dialect taught in lessons and the one they need to be proficient in for the GCSE exam is called Shuddho Bangla, spoken in the region of Dakha (which I have just learnt, means “correct Bangla”!)
The Bangla teacher is amazing at including the cultural side of Bangla and at helping students to be proud of their heritage. She organises parties where parents are invited, organises trips to see drama plays in Bangla and visit parts of London marked by the Bangladeshi culture (There are many such locations in East London. But many students only get to discover these places for the first time during these trips)
At KS4 (14 to 16 years old), students can choose to study Bangali as part of their subjects for the GCSE exam. Each year, about 20% of the cohort decides to study it.
Unfortunately, not much is done for other heritage languages. The MFL department (Modern Foreign Languages), that I am part of, organises each year, around the International Day of Multilingualism (27th March) a whole week to celebrate all languages and cultures. But there isn’t much else done (Of course, in MFL lessons, we try to give a taste of the target culture, but it is different to celebrating a student’s heritage culture)
The objectives of my role
I have three interlinked official objectives:
Develop our students’ cultural capital
Obtain the International School Status Reaccreditation from the British Council. I will use the requirements of the reaccreditation as guidance too.
Sustain and develop the links we have with our partner schools. As I started in September, my predecessors had already created links with schools in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. The partnerships we had were mainly based on financial help we could provide them.
Since July, there have been new developments: The school in Kenya and our then year 7 students (11-12 years old) are exchanging letters to discover each other's cultures. We also started cultural exchange projects with a school in India. The school in Uganda (an all-girls school) and our school also started discussing working on a project to talk about Female Empowerment, what it means, and what it looks like in both countries (and globally).
My aim is to develop these projects already in place and to create new enriching links for our students.
The logic behind everything I’ll be doing
If you have been following me for a while on social media, or if I did an author visit in your school, you already know that I believe in creating an environment that will make children WANT to discover more, and be curious. I often talk about the 20-80 ratio to motivate children to read and write in their home languages: Asking for 20% of effort so they get 80% of fun! This is how I want to help our students develop cultural capital, explore their own, and their friends’ cultures, and become global citizens.
How do I want to create this environment to make our students more curious
Our students’ languages and cultures will be celebrated throughout the year so the positive message is not shared punctually but becomes omnipresent and part of the school philosophy. This fun exposure to various cultures will happen in lessons and outside.
It is important that students see that the whole school is sharing the same message about languages and cultures, and not only from the MFL department.
Giving the opportunity to students to explore their own cultures and others in a fun and easy way. Who doesn’t like to have fun? If it is not forced upon the students, it also gives them the chance to start embracing this positive message at their pace and through activities that resonate with them.
It is important that our students understand that knowing different languages and cultures is positive for them at an identity level, but that they are also valuable in their studies and the world of work.
What concrete projects will take place?
Our school currently has the International School Status Accreditation from the British Council. My role is to obtain the reaccreditation. I will use its requirements as guidance to develop our students’ cultural capital.
This involves:
Having a minimum of 7 curriculum-based activities with one being focused on language learning
These activities must include all/most students of a year group, or the whole school
3 projects involving partner schools in different countries
Mentoring other schools to get the International School Status
Having a part of our website dedicated to how we educate global citizen and develop their cultural capital.
Here are a few other things I would like to do this year:
Having a “Language of the Months Calendar” where each month, we will celebrate one of our students’ home languages and the associated cultures. (I got the idea at a conference where a school explained how they were doing it)
I will be recruiting International Ambassadors to help me create and lead on all the activities we will organise outside lessons to celebrate the language of each month. I also want these ambassadors to get a reward trip for the work they will be putting.
Organising a few other events where ALL of our students’ cultures and languages are celebrated.
Lead on an “enquiry group” on translanguaging. In my school, we have several enquiry groups focused on various topics. The goal is to focus on one aspect of our teaching that we would like to improve. Teachers and teaching assistants choose the group they wish to join. This goes well with my wish to not impose things on people, but start with people who are interested.
If you are interested in learning how these ideas develop throughout the year, please check-out my next blog post. I will cover the months of September and October and explain how I am starting to implement all these ideas.
The reason I am writing this blog is to get feedback from people who already did this in their school, and to give ideas to teachers thinking of doing something similar in their schools. So, please feel free comment below.
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