Celebrating our International Community

It’s our responsibility as educators to ensure that we provide them with positive, varied experiences, and as part of this, we must prepare them to live and work in a globalised society.

Developing the intercultural understanding of our pupils, and instilling in them a sense of respect for the upbringings, backgrounds and cultures of others is an important part of growing up and a vital part of school life.

The increasingly complex challenges facing our society must be overcome in partnership with peers from all over the world, something that we should be teaching children from a young age.

Our young people must learn to recognise and reflect their own identity while also appreciating the perspectives of others. Pursuing opportunities to celebrate and experience other cultures is paramount to this.

At Lomond School, our pupils are lucky enough to be surrounded by young people from all over the world – countries including Spain, France, Germany, Russia, Georgia, Serbia, Thailand, Malaysia, China and the US.

We’re proud of our international pupils, who enrich our school community with new traditions while also learning from our Scottish heritage and history.

Understandably, not every school community is made up from such a diverse cross-section of society, but an emphasis can nonetheless be placed on identifying, studying and celebrating traditions from all corners of the world.

We find opportunities to celebrate and appreciate our cultural similarities and differences both within the curriculum and through events and activities.

Recently, we celebrated the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, by learning about the legends and meanings behind the most important annual event in China. Our boarders visited Glasgow to source ingredients, and cooked a traditional Chinese meal of egg fried rice, garlic hoisin beef, Sichuan chicken wings, pak choi and chicken Chow Mein.

It’s also important for pupils, both local and from further afield, to learn from and appreciate our strong Scottish heritage. We acknowledge this with events such as Scottish Week, during which our youngest pupils took part in Scottish poetry and music competitions, competed in a mini Highland Games and opened their own Scottish café, while our Junior 5 pupils hosted a Burns Night supper for their parents and invited guests.

With the rise of social media and developments in technology, our children are growing up in an increasingly small world, and it’s our job to prepare them to live and work in a society that collaborates on an international scale.

Ensuring that we acknowledge and learn about international cultures from our pool of pupils and their heritages is important for, above all, making each child feel valued but also for providing new experiences and lessons for all of our young people as they prepare for life after school.

Through demonstrating an inclusive, accepting and unbiased approach for children from a young age, we can influence their perspective on the world we live in and help build positive values as they grow into the next generation of leaders.