Celebrating our Differences and Learning Together: A Community Club Update

“Kindness is a language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” – Mark Twain

At BVIS, we have many aims for our students and teachers. Two of the key values we hope to foster in our students are caring and respect. Caring for our peers, whether they are in need of our assistance or simply through daily acts of kindness and good manners can be a challenging commitment. Respecting that those who are different can still offer a great deal to our school and wider community can be difficult to understand at times. We hope that our Community Clubs can offer just one avenue by which our students can come together to learn more about these core values.

This year, we introduced a new club with our special needs link school, Chuyen Biet Rang Dong. Following the continued success of Circus Club, we wanted to offer a second club that appealed to the quieter, more introverted students at both BVIS and CBRD.

Rhythm and Books Club is run my Ms Van Nguyen and Ms Van Dang each week in the BVIS Library. A group of Y4-Y6 BVIS students meet each week with a different group of CBRD students to learn together. At the end of each session, BVIS students have time to reflect on that week’s session and make suggestions about what to do the following week.

One of the most valuable aspects of our partnership with CBRD is that their staff and students are able to make suggestions to our staff and students as to what they would like to do in future sessions. This open dialogue led to a wonderful peer-teaching initiative, wherein the students at CBRD taught our BVIS students some sign language. We have also been spending our time listening to amazing stories, act our gestures as jungle animals and colour pictures together.

Our students’ achievements include an increased awareness of caring, compassion and an overall improvement in enthusiastic attitude. We are very proud of our BVIS club members.