Global Diversity Day

Miss Mallaby worked with 'Eye of The Fly' to organise Global Diversity Day for Year 7 on Thursday 12th November. This was in support of the school’s bid to win the International School Award by demonstrating a commitment to global education.

The purpose of Global Diversity Day was to instil an international dimension into pupils’ learning experiences, to make them more aware of the opportunities available to them in a multicultural region like South Shields and to encourage them to reflect on the cultural diversity in their area.

Tutors from 'Eye of The Fly', an outreach charity dedicated to engaging young people throughout Tyne and Wear, allowed our pupils to experience a morning of African, Chinese or Indian culture. Workshops included African drumming, Chinese cuisine, Hindi singing…and we mustn’t forget all the dancing! As you can see from the photographs, we all had lots of fun and learnt a lot from our visiting tutors. In the afternoon pupils got together to share their experiences and discuss the benefits of embracing cultural diversity. Read some of our Year 7s' accounts of the day below...

Some of the Year 7's comments...

Last Thursday we did something called ‘Global Diversity Day’, meaning we learnt about different cultures. There were Indian, Chinese and African workshops. I experienced African culture. We did mask making with clay, African drumming on the bongos (found in West Africa) and some African face masks. Even though there was African fashion and some more workshops that I would have liked to have attended, I didn’t really mind because I did have fun and that’s what counts. Also, I learnt lots about the African culture. If we have another Global Diversity Day (I hope we do), I would like to learn about the Chinese culture because there were Chinese Fashion and Origami workshops.
Akiba Azad, 7SV

Here at Harton Technology College on Thursday the 12th of November 2009, we had a Global Diversity Day.
My group was learning about the African culture; we learnt about African fashion, mosaic making and African dance. In the fashion we were in pairs and created our own clothing. At the end of it we had a cat walk competition and me and my partner, Kiera Yorston, won so our dress was put on display!
I think that the fashion and dance activities were the best. I liked the dance because I thought that it was going to be really boring but it was really fun. Global diversity is all about bringing all different cultures together and proving that there is no need for racism; after all we all are human and bleed the same color red.
De-ana Wells, 7TB

I loved that day! I thought everything was well prepared for us and the salsa dancing and fashion clothing were my favourite workshops because I love to get crafty and really enjoy dancing. I preferred those lessons rather than the mosaics, although I did still enjoy this experience, too.
Alicia Todd, 7PI

My feelings about Global Diversity Day are that it was a very very fun day and the workshop that I liked the best was the henna painting because you were able to do your own design and you learnt about what henna actually is. Even though the henna painting was the best workshop I also liked them all. When my group did the drumming I thought that it was really, really fun because Simon just let us do our own thing at the beginning and at the end. When we did our own thing it sounded really good!
Emily Dewfall, 7CE   

On the morning of Global Diversity Day, we had the register taken, and then were sent to a different class. There, we were split into two different groups and sent to another room. Once we had taken off our coats and put down our bags, we were asked to act out Indian folk tales, but only using sounds. Our instructor was called Rachel and was from a travelling drama group. Acting out the fable was quite funny, considering some of the animal noises which came out of people’s mouths! Following that, we were taught by a dancing instructor in the gym and enjoyed the final boys v girls battle, although the only thing I could do was the six step. After that, we went over to the DT block to do a fashion show. We had to get into pairs and dress each other up in Indian style costumes using only materials in the classroom. Thankfully, there were a LOT of materials in the classroom! The last activity in the afternoon was a double lesson on global diversity which was very informing.
Harry Summers, 7CB
 
At Harton Technology College, we did a day all about Global Diversity. Our form class got split into groups and we did three activities in the morning, but both groups didn’t do the same thing. The three activities that my group did were drumming, making masks and making faces out of clay. The other group did fashion, dancing and mosaics and the three cultures we were doing about were Indian, African and Chinese. All the activities that we did were really amazing and the ones that we didn’t do sounded really fun too. After dinner we got back together. But when we got back together we had to split into groups of four to do a project about what we did all day. Miss Sprouting gave us some time to practise what we were going to do then after we were done we had to show the whole class. Miss Sprouting told us that ours was the bestJ. Other than that the day was amazing.
Kelsey Cawkwell, 7PI