KC Public School: A Cultural Exchange Using Greetings Cards
Posted: 15 January 2019
As a Round Square school, we wanted to develop our young students’ appreciation of diversity and different cultures, celebrating the similarities and differences between them. We decided to involve Class 1 because our school believes that any programme started at an early age has a stronger and longer-lasting impact.
Author: Sonia Thakur, Creative Head, RS Rep
Planning
After attending Round Square Discovery Framework workshops at Hong Kong and Windsor,UK, the school started taking small steps to implement the Discovery Framework. We liaised with Aimee Theodore (Head of Programme Development, Round Square) for help with this, and she was kind enough to facilitate the collaborative project with Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School, Atlanta, USA. After exchanging emails with the Head of Primary, Greg Kaiser, it was mutually agreed to initiate the project through welcome greetings cards.
The idea of using greetings cards was chosen as they enabled the students to share and celebrate something that they enjoyed, helping them connect to those studying in a different country by showing the commonalities and differences between the children’s interests.
Activity
The students designed their greetings cards as part of classroom activity working to the theme, ‘We Share the Same Sunshine’.
Before they commenced the task, we encouraged students to think about the topic of diversity through a series of warm-up activities.
Introduction to the U.S.A: The teachers showed a PowerPoint presentation displaying important places and landmarks in the U.S.A, such as Disneyland, New York and Hollywood. This provided an opportunity to talk about the similarities and differences in our cultures. The students were familiar with the globally-known Disney characters, but I showed them a Disney video in English retelling a story that they were less familiar with. We also discussed the differences between our city and that of New York, comparing their size and make-up. The children were particularly surprised by the prominence of skyscrapers! In talking about ‘Hollywood’ we compared it to Bollywood, and talked about the reasons why Bollywood is better-known by young people in India.
Introduction to Atlanta: We then shared some information about the area where Holy Innocents’ School is located. We talked about the sports played by people in the area, identifying those that are popular in India, and sports that we are less familiar with.
Introduction to the School: Our students really enjoyed seeing pictures of Holy Innocents’ School and watching videos of students talking about what they enjoy doing at home. They had never heard of a pyjama party before and are now eager to have one! The children remarked on how the students looked very different to them. They were surprised that they spoke English fluently and recognised the difference in accent from the British English they are more accustomed to. Our students also enjoyed sharing information about our school environment with Holy Innocents’ pupils. We sent them a video showing different areas of our school including our classrooms, play areas, yoga rooms and principal’s office. The video helped demonstrate to the students how some of our environments are similar, and others different, for example, how the existence of a yoga room is something that is more common in Indian schools.
The photos and videos generated a lot of interest among the students and inspired them to think about ideas for their own greetings cards.
Some of the students were unsure about what pictures they should draw but the teachers gave them the freedom to draw whatever they liked. This meant that all 59 cards turned out to be different and dealt with a variety of themes. Once the cards were completed, they were shown to each school through a video presentation.
Our students’ cards touched on different religions, urban environments (such as markets), and animal characters. The cards received from Holy Innocents’ largely depicted the figure of Santa Claus. It was interesting for us to discuss the history and popularity of Christmas in different countries and compare the prominence of this festival in the U.SA. and India. The students also noticed the differences between the cards received from the U.S.A such as the use of colour, faces, and the different designs: the Santa’s were not uniformly alike. It underlined an important point; that not all things that appear to be the same, are the same, just because they come from the same country.
Challenges
It was rewarding to collaborate on this Early Years’ initiative and we are excited to expand on this in the future. We are conscious that the frequency of such exchanges can sometimes be affected by the fact that schools follow their own different patterns of summer and winter breaks and may have competing priorities. We learned, however, that it is important to try and find time for exchange and will consider using tools, such as WhatsApp, in the future to share news and feedback with colleagues overseas.
We have also considered organising an exchange at a different time of year, where the brief for creating a greeting card might lend itself to some broader themes and messages.
Impact
The greetings cards initiative encouraged the students to be inquisitive about another culture and to learn more about each other’s countries. In the assemblies of both junior and senior wings of our school, students mentioned their collaborative project with a sense of pride, hopefully inspiring others to consider opportunities to learn about countries and cultures outside of India.
The project has also been warmly welcomed by parents. In the annual function, our Round Square Prefect in his annual report apprised parents ofthe Round Square activities and the collaborative project. Parents have told us that they feel proud that their child’s school is collaborating with another Round Square school in the U.S.A. They have even told us that they would like the opportunity for all children to participate in such partnerships.
The future
We discovered that a way to engage students of this age group is through mediums such as Art and story-telling and can see a way to develop this with the performing arts.
Some of the work we are doing with the Discovery Framework, for example, utilises these mediums to engage our young pupils. Our Senior Students have created ‘Cheer Chants’, which celebrate and define a Discovery, for example, ‘Teamwork’ cheer chants are: “Heigh, heigh, heigh, heigh heigh heigh hee, less of me and more of we, together we make a unity tree.”
The performing arts have also inspired a Discovery Framework ‘Exhibition’, a series of performances attended by parents. These include songs, puppet shows, dances, and story enactments based on the tenets.
We would love to share video presentations of songs, dances, puppet theatre and cheer chants with other Round Square Schools.
Advice
For early years students’, it’s important to ensure that any activities you plan are:
- Simple
- Interesting
- Child-centric