Belonging through language

Hillcrest Kindergarten educators Amanda Cloke and Louise Treweek describe how seeing the language of one’s own culture enables students and families to obtain a sense of belonging. The use of inclusive language in a student’s portfolio adds power to the voice of the child.

Transcript

Amanda Cloke

You have to look at what you have, know your children and try things out, especially for children that English is a second language. There’s not a right or a wrong way, you just have to try what’s going to work for that child, and by trying, you build a better relationship with the parent because they know that you’re really going that extra mile for their child. And we notice when the children have that sense of belonging, then their English comes and their play develops.

So for me, coming into this kindergarten, which was already quite established as a multicultural kindergarten, I knew about bicultural, but I was quite new to multicultural. To step into an environment that had lots of signage in Chinese and see the reaction from parents that came in or visitors that were Chinese and the amazement on their face when they saw – and you know, they would point out – oh that’s Chinese. You know, so that was really enlightening for me. Like it really cemented how important seeing language in your own culture is important to families – it’s essential.

Louise Treweek

We noticed that our writing of children’s learning in their portfolios that we didn’t have that cultural language throughout our work. And we’re working closely with our families to get that right. And we’re making a booklet just for our teachers as a go to. You can cut and paste that, put it in the child’s portfolio, and it just brings a little bit more power to that voice of that child of how well they’ve done in their learning. And one example, we had our student teacher came and help us, and she wrote a learning story as part of her learning journey as a student. And then she translated it into their language and gave it to the parent, and this parent just looked at it and read it in her own language and just burst into tears. It was just so powerful – amazing.

Amanda Cloke

I came across a book, it was Leo the Late Bloomer, in Mandarin and I read it in English – one page – and then Vicky read it in Mandarin. And the children were amazed. We noticed that students that we had that spoke Mandarin as their first language were just fixated on this book. It was just great – a light bulb went off and a spark! You know, we can extend this, you know, the world is huge, we could just – we could do so much just from having two simple books the same.

As teachers, we have limitations. Yep, we can’t read Japanese, so we ask the families if they could share that. And families were, when they were asked, were really proud and honoured to be asked and they really wanted to share, you know. A sense of belonging and wellbeing is the start, the settling in part for children. If they don’t have a sense of belonging or their wellbeing is not cared for, they’re not going to learn in our environment.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Hillcrest Kindergarten and educators Amanda Cloke and Louise Treweek.

Supported by the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative Fund from government funding, managed by the New Zealand Council for Education Research.

Leo the Late Bloomer, by Robert Krause, illustrated by Jose Aruego, HarperCollins (first published 1971). Chinese edition published by Hxinex International Corporation (1999).