As the world becomes more interconnected, there’s nothing more important than preparing our children to succeed on the global stage. That means that students not only know how to thrive in a workplace stretching across time zones, they also need to know how to stay open-minded when interacting with other cultures.
Learning a foreign language is a key part of preparing students to have a global perspective. Every student who comes to Whitby studies at least one foreign language. They start with Spanish at eighteen months in our dual IB and Montessori preschool and have the option to also begin learning Chinese (Mandarin) in first grade.
Yet to understand a foreign culture, students need more than just skill with vocabulary and language. To truly be able to communicate with someone in a foreign language, it’s important to know about the stories that matter in their country.
At Whitby, we see this firsthand. We have many internationally-born students who have grown up hearing different stories than children who were born in America. They may not have read Cat in the Hat, but they’re able to share stories from their own culture with the other students.
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
- Ursula K. LeGuin
How We Use Stories To Help Students Develop a Global Perspective
Stories are important because they communicate what is important to a culture. They bring national concerns to life, and tell of the struggles people have overcome.
At Whitby, we bring local literature into our language classes to help students develop a genuine interest in the culture of the language they’re studying. Our Upper School students read important books such as In the Time of the Butterflies, a fictional retelling of four women who caused an uprising by rebelling against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.
As they read, we help students develop their cultural literacy by diving into the historical significance of the events in the book, the political culture and the impact upon South America. Most importantly, however, students reading the book get to understand the women and what motivated their rebellious stand:
Sometimes I really feel it here, especially late at night, a current among us, like an invisible needle stitching us together into the glorious, free nation we are becoming.
- Maria Theresa, In the Time of the Butterflies
For example, the above quote is said by Maria Theresa when the sisters are in jail. We view significant passages like that as a great starting place for discussion within the classroom. Students don’t have to understand line-by-line—we encourage them to infer and promote discussion around the reading assignment. That gives us an opportunity to discuss how the Trujillo dictatorship affected each of the women in the story in different ways, and how hope for a different future brought them together. All those help students gain a deeper perspective into the history of the Dominican Republic.
With younger students, we seek to help them develop a global perspective by having them read the same magazines and books their peers are reading in South America. Our students also have the opportunity to read ¿Qué Tal? magazine, which features stories about the culture of different Spanish speaking countries.
Recently, when visiting Colegio San Viator, a private school in Bogotá, Colombia, we asked “What are your students reading? What books do you have them read to develop their own skills at Spanish?”
We also asked IB schools in Lima, Perú and Buenos Aires, Argentina what literature they have students read in class. Then we brought those books back to Whitby so our students can dive into the same material.
Local Literal Promotes Cultural Understanding
Every culture has stories that are crucial to their national identity. These stories can be real or fictional, but they are important to helping other people understand how people think and feel in that culture. As students read native language texts, they naturally learn about history, art, music, and traditions while developing the cultural context to understand native speakers better.
There’s no way someone can call themselves a Spanish speaker without knowing literature from Latin America.
The goal of our language program at Whitby is to go beyond helping students just acquire the ability to speak a foreign language. We also want students to develop a genuine appreciation for the languages they learn — and to understand the cultural background of native speakers. That’s why we believe it’s so important for students to get the opportunity to read local literature when studying a foreign language.
To learn more about our language learning program at Whitby, schedule a tour of our campus.
