“In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”
- Maya Angelou
.
.
.
One of the biggest parts of education that I am passionate about is the celebration of diversity. The school that I am a teacher at is the number two most diverse elementary school in Michigan, and top ten in the United States (Niche, 2022). We have over 70% minority populations in our school, with over 30 languages spoken (U.S.News, 2022). One of my favorite parts of my school is that of the 606 students that attend, 232 of them are Multilingual Learners, which accounts for 39.4% of the school's population (Albanese, 2022).
My favorite week of the school year is the week that we spend celebrating our students diverse backgrounds through the Parade of Nations. Students dress up in their personal cultural clothing, hold a sign with their country on it, and walk the red carpet as we celebrate our school's rich diversity. During this event, the strong sense of belonging, love and diversity is hard to ignore. Students have the largest smiles, teachers have tears in their eyes, and the feelings of love are apparent.
To encase this feeling, I was inspired by some street art that I saw in Limerick, Ireland this past weekend. It was a large piece of street art that said "Diversity = Strength" with a smaller sign that said "Limerick United Against Racism". I snapped a quick photo with fleeting thoughts, but despite this, my heart kept coming back to this sign.
So, when my professor asked us to create something that we were passionate and curious about, my mind immediately came back to this photograph. I decided to use my favorite graphic design software, Canva, and create two different creations. See the pictures below to view my creations.
For the first creation, I chose to create a collage of photos that showcase how diverse my school is. First, I looked back at some pictures of students I took during our 2022 Parade of Nations, and added them to a canvas that says, "Diversity = Strength". The photos include a picture of a South Sudanese girl, a Vietnamese girl, two Jamaican boys, an Ethiopian boy, three students from Myanmar, and a girl from Rwanda. The middle focal point of the canvas shows the event from afar, that includes the flags of every country representing our students in our cafeteria. In that photo, you can also see that we had colored flags for every student who did not participate in the walk, and celebrated each country by waving flags and cheering.
For the second creation, I chose to create a Welcome sign of all the languages spoken at my school. It was difficult to find some of the translations for some of the languages, but I was able to find all of them and put them into a canvas in my classroom's color scheme. For the welcome sign, I specifically chose to not put "welcome" in English as the center focal point of the poster because I want my students to know that all languages carry the same weight. I plan to print this photograph from Canva and hang it on my door to welcome my students into my classroom.
References
Albanese, E. (2022). Elementary school recognized for English learner achievement. School News
Endeavor Elementary. (2022). U.S. News.
2022 Most Diverse Public Elementary Schools in Michigan. (2022). Niche.
留言