Main image: Irwin Memorial students with their new welcome sign (from left) Baxter Hay, Jasmine Lou, Tom Dailloux, Ella Butkovitch, Niah Sovereign, and Gennaro Rezmuves. Not pictured are Bethany Peverall-Volpe, Kaden Sovereign, Maris Hay, and Darius Urquhart. (submitted)
Irwin Memorial Public School students have created a unique way to both welcome visitors and celebrate diversity.
A new sign featuring ‘welcome’ in 12 different languages has been installed at the Dwight school’s entrance.
Grade 1/2 teacher Kirsten Conner got the idea for the sign this past summer while scrolling through an educational social media feed and thought it would be a great addition at Irwin.
She asked interested families in the school community to take paint and a board home and paint “welcome” on it in their language. Students in all grades as well as staff were welcome to participate.
“We thought we would need to have students research different cultures but we had all of this natural diversity right in their own school. Next thing we knew there were 12 different languages being written on the boards,” said Conner.
The languages include: Australian Aborigines, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, Gaelic, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Mohawk, Ojibway, and Spanish. An Arabic board will be added soon.
“Each time a new board arrived my students were so excited and they had their own little celebration. They wanted to know how to say the word and then learn about the culture. They were so proud of themselves,” said Conner.
Once the boards were returned to the school, staff members helped put them together to make the sign.
“This project created a huge interest in culture and languages for my students. Teaching about other cultures teaches understanding and empathy. Our little community is more diverse than we realize and can learn a lot from each other,” said Conner.
She has integrated learning about cultural diversity into her classroom.
“We are a richer community for learning the language and cultures that make our little school so special,” she said. “Listening and learning about languages and cultures makes us more effective communicators and teaches awareness, empathy and increases creativity.”
Jasmine Lou’s first language is Chinese and she is always excited to teach her grade 1/2 class different words and numbers.
The grade 1/2 class has a goal to learn Merry Christmas in other languages before the holiday break.
As long as there’s interest and other languages in the Irwin community, Conner is happy to keep adding new boards to their welcome sign.
“We have received amazing support from students, staff, and families in this project. Everyone has been so encouraging and excited to learn something new,” she said.
Don’t miss out on Doppler!
Sign up here to receive our email digest with links to our most recent stories.
Local news in your inbox so you don’t miss anything!
Click here to support local news
Brenda Begg says
Love it! ????
Susan Lovelk says
Great idea Kirsten. Well done. Love this.