The importance of looking outwards and forwards

My name is Clare.  I am a teacher.  I have been a teacher for 21 years.  I have been a teacher for 21 years in the City of Sunderland.  I have lived in the City of Sunderland for 22 years.  My husband and my two daughters were born in Sunderland.  I was not.  I was born in South London, and then grew up and went to school in Surrey.  I chose to live in Sunderland.  I guess that makes me an immigrant.  I have always done a job that could have been done by a local.  And the vast majority of teaching jobs in Sunderland, especially in primary schools, are done by locals.  It is unusual to hear an accent that is not Geordie or Mackem.  It is a little more common in secondary schools.  But it has never bothered the children I teach.  I think that is because they assume that I am French and/or Spanish, and that is why I talk differently to them.  My daughters get me to copy them saying things like "The giraffe laughed in the bath", but then they admit that I sound weird.

I think it's good for children to hear at school accents that are different to theirs.  It makes them realise that there is life and therefore possibility and opportunity outside of Wearside.  Because it is a very insular place, with comparatively little social or actual mobility.  It is this fact that has motivated me throughout my career as a teacher of languages.

In 1997 I volunteered to attend a meeting on behalf of my department at the secondary school where I worked at the time.  It was a meeting held by the local authority about something called Comenius European Education Projects, about which none of us knew anything, but which the blurb on the leaflet made look quite interesting.  This meeting was to change the course of my career.  Comenius projects have had various names since then, most recently coming under the Erasmus+ aegis, but they remain essentially the same: a group of European schools sets up a partnership together and receive funding from the European Union to enable them to do a collaborative project.  From the beginning in 1998 of the first project that I co-ordinated until the last project that I was part of in 2009, I worked with colleagues in France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Estonia and Lithuania.   I personally learned a great deal from all of them and was able to travel to places that I know I would never have seen otherwise.  The students also learned a huge amount from their European counterparts.  They found that there were some differences in their cultures and ways of life, but there were also many similarities.  These differences gave them cause to reflect upon their own culture and their own way of life.

I hope that this was enough to arouse sufficient curiosity in some of them to want to explore the "world outside", that it gave them the courage to look outwards and try something new.  Because on Thursday 23rd June, 61.3% of the 134,324 Sunderlanders who turned out to vote in the referendum (out of a possible 207,207 voters) ticked the box that said "Leave the European Union".  They chose to turn their backs on the millions of Euros that the EU has invested in the City over the years to help to regenerate the area after the closure of the mines.  They turned their backs on the efforts made by the City Council to forge links with and to open doors to communities in other countries.  They turned their backs on the efforts made by many of the City's schools to show children the wider world.  They turned their backs and decided that it is better to look inwards and backwards.

I wrote this rationale in 2001, but its words still ring just as true today:

"We are living in a rapidly changing, “shrinking” world.  Technological advances and economic and political changes have produced an increasingly global society of which we cannot fail to be aware.  Pupils of XXXXXXX  XXXXXXX are conscious that changes are taking place, but perhaps not of what these changes could mean for themselves and their lives, chiefly in their position as global citizens.  They remain traditionally insular in their attitudes, and have little access to, understanding of, or means of communication with the “world outside”.  Our pupils are, after all, the adults of the future, and should complete their education and enter the world of work fully cognisant of the opportunities that are open to them globally and equipped with the skills and attitudes that will enable them to live successfully alongside their international neighbours."

Our political landscape is currently changing by the hour, and uncertainty about the way forward following the Leave vote continues to increase.  I intend to go into my schools this week and continue to fight the good fight of the language teacher, to show the children that there is a world outside their window and that it is a colourful, interesting, friendly, welcoming and wonderful place.  We do not yet know if they will have access to the freedoms of movement and labour that we have enjoyed, or if schools will have the opportunity to access the funding streams that will enable them to participate in eye-opening projects with other schools in Europe.  But I have every confidence that we will find a way.  We have to find a way.

Take a walk around the world

I expect lots of people are going to be looking for Olympics-related ideas for their lessons next year, me included.  Today I found out about the Global Children's Challenge.  Teachers of Y4, Y5 and Y6 and their classes are invited to apply to take part (applications close on 31st July, so you'll need to act quickly).  The idea is that teachers and the children in their classes wear a pedometer every day for the 50 days of the challenge, which runs from 15th September until 3rd November.  They work as a team to accumulate and log actual physical steps, which then enable them to take virtual steps around the world via the Challenge website.  There is the possibility of visiting 50 different countries.  The Challenge is an initiative designed to get children more active, but of course is also an excellent global and intercultural opportunity.  Full information is on the Challenge website, and you can download the flyer here.


Admittedly time isn't on most schools' side with both holidays and the application deadline looming, so many schools who want to take part may not be able to.  But there's nothing stopping you from adapting the Challenge and putting your own spin on it.  Pick a French-speaking or Spanish-speaking country and find out the distance from its capital to ours.  Will they be able to walk enough steps to get to London in time for the Olympics?  Where will they pass on the way?   Give yourself a time limit and see how many countries you can walk to in that time.  Can you do a tour of Africa or of South America?  There are all sorts of possibilities.


If you reckon on 2000 steps to a mile, you and your class will soon be able to rack up the miles.  The cheapest pedometers are available for about £3 from places like Argos and Amazon.  You'll be able to watch your class tearing around the playground, getting lots of exercise and enabling you to tell them about lots of fascinating countries and cultures.




*Image by the brilliant @bevevans22

The Birth of a Nation

I have been following with interest over the last few days the news coverage of the beginnings of the Republic of South Sudan.  It was this BBC news article which first captured my attention.  It talks about all the things that the new nation will have had to sort out in advance of its official "birth" yesterday, such as its political border, its flag, stamps, currency and its country-level internet domain.  South Sudan had an X-Factor style competition for its new national anthem.


It struck me that this would make a good school project.  Tell the children that your region - the north-east in my case - has decided to become an independent state.  They have to decide on its capital city (Newcastle?  Sunderland?  Durham?  Controversial!), a flag, currency and so on.  What they choose will depend on the cultural identity and heritage of where they live.  This could also work in language lessons.  Instead of their own region, you could choose a region of one of the target-language countries.  For example, tell them that Castilla y León is going to become an independent state.  They will have to do some research to find out more about it if they are going to create a meaningful profile for it.  And then of course they can practise their presentation skills by introducing their new country to the rest of the class.


Just an idea.

Working with partner schools overseas

When I first started working with partner schools overseas, in 1997, communicating with partners and exchanging project work involved faxes, telephones, files, CDs, video tapes, books, pieces of art and craft work.... and many expensive trips to the Post Office to post it all. It took time for it all to reach the partners, and just as long for them to send theirs to us. Everything took a long time. Over the years, however, thanks to all the new technology that is out there, this communication and sharing of work has become much easier, quicker and cheaper. There are many web tools that we can use now to collaborate with our partners.

Two of the tools that have really taken off in the MFL world are Storybird and Storyjumper. Brian Stobie, the international officer for County Durham, discovered Storybird recently and could immediately see its use for partnership work. He asked me to give a presentation about Storybird and Storyjumper at the Atlas (RNIL) conference today. I agreed to speak for 10 minutes, just to give delegates a taster and to whet their appetites to find out more. I decided to present Storybird and Storyjumper as a story. I hope you like it.


Here is a Storybird that I wrote in collaboration with Dominic McGladdery.  I wanted Fiona Joyce, queen of the MFL Storybird Wiki, to be involved as well, but at the moment you can only collaborate with one other person.
What do you like to do ? by d_mcg, CSeccombe on Storybird

Storybird and Storyjumper aren't of course the only programs that can be used in this way.  You could also try Voki, Wallwisher, Voicethread, Xtranormal and GoAnimate, to name but a few.  And you could set up a blog or wiki for the partnership so that you have some shared webspace via which to share your work.  Anything that motivates you and your students to sustain your partnership and make it meaningful can only be a good thing.

Food flags, informative flags

I always check my Tweets while I'm having my breakfast in the morning.  This morning there was one in particular which caught my eye:

Last year's Sydney International Food Festival was promoted with these wonderful images of national flags made up of their country's iconic foods.  Here is a copy of the poster, which you can download as an A3 or A4 PDF here. 

You may know by now that I am passionate about international education, in particular about getting people to see past stereotypes and find the "real" people and countries in the world.  These flags seem like an excellent place to start.

Esther Mercier (the genius behind A tantôt) suggests giving the pictures to Food Technology teachers so that they can join in European Day of Languages.  Students can research which flag is portrayed each time, and which foods are used to make them.  They could then have a go at making their own flags for other countries.  This links in nicely with the World Cup as well.  While pupils are finding out about the 31 teams who aren't England, they could research the typical foods of the countries and have a go at representing them pictorially like this.

But why stop at food ?  There are all sort of images and indeed words that could be represented as flags.

Here is a Spanish flag I made using MS Publisher.  Is it the truth or is it stereotype ?

And here is a French flag represented as a Calligram that I made using Imagechef and Publisher.  Students could do the writing themselves.

There are many possibilities.  If you're not averse to a bit of mess in your classroom, get some travel brochures and get the students to make some mosaic flags with images of the chosen country.  Whichever method you choose, they will certainly make for an eye-catching display.

One flag that is missing from the Sydney poster is ours.  What foods would your students put on a pictorial representation of our flag ?  Why ?  What other images would they put on our flag to represent our country.  They are obliged to think about their own country and its identity.  Community cohesion.

World Cup Calligrams

Combining ideas for bringing the World Cup into your classroom and my love of calligrams:

World Cup Calligrams

View more presentations from cseccombe.

I found a football colouring sheet and lightened the lines to pale grey using PaintShop Pro. Braver people could draw their own in pencil ! Then I filled in each section with words about England and being English. These are the images that you can see on the slides.

Suggestions for using this in the classroom:

• Show pupils the images and ask them to read what is written in each section. Why have these words been chosen ? This makes them think about their own country and the things that typify it - community cohesion !
• Pupils then research another of the World Cup countries, finding out similar information.
• Pupils either draw their own footballer or find a suitable colouring sheet and represent their findings as a calligram. It's even better if they use the country's national colours.
• For a MFL twist, pupils can present their findings in their foreign language or even in the country's language !

We are multicolored

"Join Twitter, it's really good."
"It's the best CPD you'll ever have."
"I find it incredibly useful."

In April some esteemed TESsers were muttering about the wonders of Twitter. In a moment of idle curiosity I registered and had a look around, but honestly failed to see the point. The TESsers persisted, tracking me down and following me.

It didn't take long for me to become totally hooked. Each day I receive interesting information from those I follow. For example, today I received a link to Free Technology for Teachers, which looks like just my kind of website. I had a peruse of the MFL links, and came across something that is definitely my kind of site - We are multicolored.



In my World Cup 2010 presentation (see previous post), one of my ideas for using the flags of the qualifying nations was for pupils to research the colours and symbols used in flags and then design a flag to represent themselves.

"We are multicolored" is a website that will help them to do just that. The site is the brainchild of some of the digital artists at the Tenement Museum in New York, which aims to "promote awareness around the contemporary immigrant experience".

There are two main areas of the site. If you click on "symbolism", you can browse the flags of the world and the colours and shapes that they use, and find out the meanings behind them. Then on the homepage you have the opportunity to create your own flag by answering three simple questions:

• where is your home ?
• what other country has affected you ?
• where have you dreamed of going ?

Then you are given the three flags of the countries you have chosen, and you can click and drag their individual elements to make your own personal flag. As you do so, you are shown information about the flags. When you have finished your flag, you can save it to the site and write an explanation of why you designed it that way. Clicking on "superflag" brings up all the flags that others have made and their explanations. There is also a downloadable 45 minute workshop available.

Here's the flag that I made with my three choices - United Kingdom, Spain and New Zealand.

It gets pupils to think about where they come from, where they have been and where they would like to go. Community Cohesion ! Enjoy.