The College Magazine Winter 2020

Make it Real
Developing Social Awareness in Junior School
By Iyabo Tinubu
A daily life challenge of Social Awareness is the
awareness, acceptance and inclusion of ethnical
diversity. As an international school, we are
educating the leaders of tomorrow, so it our civic
responsibility to ensure that our students make
connections with people of other races from the
past and now, and celebrate diversity as a whole,
should it be ethnic, religious, physical or
psychological.
different cultures, exposing students to different
names, different values, different traditions and
folk cultures.
Junior School Black History Month assembly
Did you know babies start to be conscious about
races as early at 18 months? In Junior School, we
believe that by learning to understand, appreciate
and empathise with others, students also learn to
know more about themselves and their own
identity. We want to change the narrative from
negative to positive, teaching students to
recognise and manage implicit biases.
It is a move forward to preparing our students,
beyond the Shunyi bubble, for the wider world and
what they may expect with regard to perceptions
at university, in the workplace, unethical behaviour
and how to speak out and handle this proactively.
We want to prepare them for the day they move
abroad and become a minority themselves.
Diversity, Equality and Inclusiveness are well
integrated in our curriculum. Diversity is brought
into the classrooms when reading stories from
Students learning African folk dance at assembly
October gave us the perfect opportunity to put
our words into action as it marks Black History
Month in the UK, highlighting the annual
commemoration of the history, achievements and
contributions of black people in the UK. Black
History Month was created by historian Carter G.
Woodson (1875-1950) in the USA. He wanted to
challenge preconceptions at the time that “the
negro has no history” and founded The Association
for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915
which encouraged scholars and historians to
research and preserve black history and culture.
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