Culture, Community Week Learnings in Dover Court International School – Secondary

The ‘Culture and Community Week’ took place in Secondary from Monday 18th – Friday 22nd September. Throughout the week, learning opportunities were curated to generate thinking around three key questions:

Who am I?

Who are we?

How can we have a positive impact in our communities?

Who am I?

During tutor time students were asked to focus on ‘Who am I?’, a simple yet deliberately thought-provoking question designed to encourage students to explore different aspects of their own identity to find out what makes each and every one of us unique. We hope this task generates opportunities at home to discuss family heritage and our interglobal connectedness.

Who are we?

Our Drop Down Day on Wednesday 20th September had students working in their Houses in mixed year group teams to focus on generating a deeper House identity – exploring the key values and history behind each House, as well as taking part in lots of House team building activities. As well as this, across the week students had the opportunity to attend additional workshops, events, and performances showcasing the rich culture of the individuals within our community, to learn more about each other's culture, traditions and heritage. The opportunities were vast and included external visiting performers in traditional Chinese instruments, an Irish band and a wonderful Flamenco and Spanish guitarist duo, as well as henna art, French crêpes, a live Art and Drumming festival, and traditional sports. Our Mandarin Faculty also hosted a number of exciting workshops.

How can we have a positive impact in our communities? To explore this question, students had a curriculum focus throughout the week in their normal curriculum lessons on the United Nations Sustainable Goals. Each subject had a different goal to focus on and students were keen to find out what progress has been made to achieving each goal and how they can support this. On the Drop Down Day, one lesson delivered was the ‘Half Time Talk for the UN SDGs’ – a lesson designed by the UN to allow students to explore the progress made towards the 2030 goals at this half time junction (the goals were set in 2015).

We were also delighted to host four local community partners in school to deliver an assembly to each House on Drop Down Day, creating what we hope become long term sustainable links to having a positive impact in our local community. These partners have been chosen as their own mission and values align closely with those of our school. Follow up work in their teams focused on what each House can do to continue to support these partners in the future. Watch this space...

These are the community partners aligned with each House:

Kranji – The Purple Parade

Ubin – Special Olympics Singapore

Newton – Curious Thoughts Giving

Jurong – Singapore Red Cross

We hope that the students gained a lot from the week and that the conversations generated, and passion ignited for service and positive community action, do not stop here.

Carla Hyland

 Secondary Deputy Head – Curriculum and Learning