Exploring Different Cultures and Diversity

I was lucky enough to be chosen as a chaperone for a school trip to China. We took 20 Grade 8 and 9 students, who were all learning Chinese, to Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai.
I took so many photos - here are just a few:

During our first week we stayed at Shanghai High School. The students attended classes throughout the week and  we all stayed in dorms. We ate the amazing school food and got to learn lots about the education system in China. During one weekend the students stayed with host families and we were taken on an adventure with some of the Chinese Teachers.  This was a really wonderful opportunity, as it gave us an authentic experience.

A short while later many of the students visited us in Atlanta. Chinese students stayed with their host families and we had one of the teachers stay with us. Most of the time students just shadowed their buddies, but we also had a few opportunities to come together as a group - including for a session I ran on stereotypes, assumptions and understanding different cultures. This session included both students from our school and SHHS.

Below is the presentation I used for the students and beneath that is a breakdown and reflection of the activities, with a few extra photographs! (You can see in the presentation that in the last slides I added in the students responses)

We started off the session with a Kahoot I created,  called 'Where in the world? China or the USA?". Here I purposefully chose some images to confuse students! This was a good opening activity to get the students to be a bit more flexible.

During the next section I used the Chalk Talk thinking routine - where students walk around adding their thoughts to some prompts, and then add further thoughts to their peers' ideas. Many people do this in silence, but I often think the oral discussion which happens when doing this activity is very valuable (and especially important as many of our students, and obviously SHHS' have English as a second language!)
Here students had several venn diagrams, with one side being 'America' and the other side being 'China'. They had venn diagrams for; food, city life, education, entertainment and family life. I had all the students work together, but it may have also been interesting to have had the groups work individually or give each school different color pens, as it would help us understand who wrote what (both schools made many of the same assumptions about each other) - however, most of this information came out in the group discussion which followed after.

Much discussion actually happened while students were filling in the venn diagrams - but we also came together as a group after.

The next activity was a I Used to Think, Now I think - here students wrote both responses on a post-it note and added it to the board. I would like to have students brainstorm ideas about the country they are visiting before going and then reflect on those later - however as this was a single lesson, students were allowed to look back to before the trip or the start of the class for their 'I used to think' answer.

To end off the session I gave students the prompt "Why is it important to experience and appreciate another culture?". Students answered this through PollEverywhere, which showed all the responses on the board and also turned them into a live word cloud. I was super impressed with their thoughtful and mature responses, as well as how articulate the students were. 

Some of my favorite responses:

• “To know I am tiny but the world is huge.”
• “Because that's when we start to know what the world really is and how we can make it better together”
• “To see the world from a different perspective”
• "It's important to experience other cultures so we put ourselves in other situations and learn from them. So we can understand people and ourselves."
• "We are living in a time that people in the whole world are connected with each other. Experiencing and understanding a different culture can help us make the world a better place together, a world with less wars and conflicts, so everyone can be better off"

​
I've added the responses from the last two activities into the last slides of the presentation at the top of this post.

Taking part in this Chinese exchange was truly inspiring - This exchange is organized by our Chinese teacher Jie Wu. She has given me so much 'food for thought', as well as so much delicious Chinese food! My teaching is better because of her influence. Hopefully we will collaborate more together in the next school year (watch this space!)

Here are some other unit/lesson ideas I had from our trip:

• What is Weird? A look at the things we think are normal about our culture, that others may find unusual, (for example; the food we eat). Also links to this TED Talk: Weird, or just Different?
• Maccy Ds and CocaCola! - How global companies tap into local traditions to market themselves around the world (I saw McDonalds advertising on the rickshaws in Beijing (image above) and CocaCola on Chinese lanterns along the old canals! We also stopped in a McDonalds while I waited for some new glasses to be made, and saw the ways they had adapted their menu, (the FoodNetwork has more info about there here.)
• How do people see us around the world?  Often we look at why we have a bias/make assumptions/believe certain stereotypes, but do we know how others perceive us or the assumptions they make about us? I definitely knew many of the British stereotypes Americans had before moving here (though I didn't realize how often they think we eat fish and chips), but what stereotypes exist in other places about me?
• Selling ourselves around the world. We all know that the Chinese food we eat abroad is not really similar to authentic Chinese food - in fact many of the regulars on my Chinese take-away menu back home, do not appear on any in America. An interesting exploration could be looking at Chinoiserie, which is western art and antiques using Chinese styles (including many objects that were made in China for a foreign market).
• How can we use innovation to help us redesign our cities? We went to visit theBeijing Museum of Urban Planning...the title sounds pretty dull, but it was probably one of my favorite places we visited! We learnt how the city was designed on a grid and why. We looked at the new commutable areas that are being built outside of Beijing - often with almost-utopian views (for example, rules related to how far a library and park can be from each person!). Although Beijing has problems with pollution and over-crowding the museum showed us some of the many forward thinking ways they are tackling these issues.
• What do tourists buy? There are whole industries made up of creating and selling 'tourist tat'. So many gifts/souvenirs you buy abroad would never be seen in someone's house from that country. How many people born and raised in New York have mini statue of liberties in their house? How many people from Margate suck on a piece of rock regularly? How many people in China have some of the posters/keychains/other touristy things I bought in their homes? I think this could be a great unit, and could have students look at some of the photography of Martin Parr. Students could also look at why we bring home souvenirs (could also link to a discussion on why we need photographs to document our trips, instead of just memories!)

This was a great opportunity for me, as I tend to only ever visit France (where my mum lives) and England (where the rest of my family live). Although I am slowly exploring more and more of America, I definitely want to see more of the world. On the top of the list of Japan and Mexico. Where else should I visit? What has been your most inspiring vacation?