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Dear Laker Community,
This week is National World Languages Week, a time to honor the rich diversity of languages and cultures around the world and to recognize the vital role language acquisition plays in our schools. Our high school Spanish students recently returned from Madrid and Sevilla, where they spent a week deepening their language proficiency and strengthening their interpersonal skills through authentic cultural immersion.
On Wednesday, March 11, WPS will host our annual Multicultural Festival, celebrating the rich cultures and traditions represented in our community through dress, dance, music, and language. This special event provides students with an opportunity to share their own cultural and linguistic backgrounds while learning more about the diversity that defines and enriches our student body.
In today’s interconnected world, the ability to understand and communicate across cultures is an essential skill. According to the IB Learner Profile, Communicators can express their ideas in a variety of ways, including speaking, writing, drawing, music, dance, and drama. They collaborate effectively, listening carefully to the perspectives of other individuals and groups. Effective communicators respond to others in a compassionate and empathetic way. Meaningful collaboration cannot occur without effective communication, and our students continue to develop these critical skills both inside and outside the classroom.
During our recent NAE Global Expeditions trip to Tanzania, WPS students exemplified these qualities in powerful ways. Our Manyara group spent a week working elbow to elbow with the Maasai tribe with minimal shared language. They participated in the Maasai jumping dance, a popular competition among the Maasai moran or warriors, and learned to start fires the Maasai way, using just sticks, a hole in the ground, and dried grass. Through shared experiences rather than shared vocabulary, they built authentic connections.
Students on the Seeway Tanzania itinerary engaged children at Ngongongare Primary School through soccer and play and learned how to count in Swahili. They collaborated with Nord Anglia peers from BIS-Chicago and Collège Champittet in multiple languages with the common goal of building goat sheds and dormitories for girls that have to walk long distances to go to high school and don’t always arrive safely. These girls end up sleeping on school grounds overnight instead of walking 1-2 hours both ways. Our students witnessed firsthand how communication, compassion, and collaboration can create meaningful and lasting impact.
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