Our 4th Equal Futures Day took place this year on St Andrew’s Day. As always the day started with an Assembly lead by S6 - I do international issues with them as part of their PSE programme, in theory we were supposed to have more planning time, but due to the way things worked out they had one period with me to talk through some of the issues and then had to plan on their own. So although my hair is a little greyer than it was, and I was thinking about Assembly at 5.15am on Friday I of course need not have worried - they carried it off with a bit of aplomb and could actually be heard at the back of the gym (no easy task).
After that everyone went off to their chosen workshops. Pupils and staff choose 3 from a wide variety. I started the day with the British Red Cross talking about some of the issues Asylum Seekers face when they come to Scotland.
My second workshop was my favourite - called “Talking with Hands”, it is an session on British Sign Language with George McGowan. As a language teacher this is a fantastic workshop to watch and take part in. I did this last year too and was pleased to see how many pupils chose to do it for a second time. George took this into account and after going over name, where you live and family, introduced likes and dislikes in school and how pupils travelled to school. The silence in this session is incredible, everything is signed - it really is immersion learning. George’s partner had come with him for the day and at lunchtime went to meet some of the students who had taken part so they could sign to her. We were keen to take BSL forward last year, but had problems getting the CDs we needed. However many of the staff and pupils who took part are keen so we are going to investigate further so we can do it as a lunchtime club. I’m quite pleased with how much I remembered and how much of a conversation I was able to hold with George and Emma over lunch and I was really pleased to see some S1 pupils signing to each other at the closing Assembly.
My last session was with Tariq, who is a poet living in Dunoon. He read from his book “The Punjabi Wedding” - although the group I was with were slow to get started, once they got into it they asked lots of questions about Islam and Punjabi culture, covering everything from the controversy surrounding the teddy in the Sudan to fasting at Ramadan to the importance of Mecca.
Other workshops included writing a song reflecting on the issues, looking at the issues through dance and drama and looking at how others see us. Three popular workshops were run by Billy Kay, on The Mither Tongue and the history of “Black” Scotland. Although I couldn’t go to this session I was pleased to hear that he emphasised the importance of language learning speaking to the group in a variety of languages.
Finally an ever popular workshop was drumming with Chief Suleman whose energy lights up the room even without the drumming! I saw a bit of a session he did with primary 1/2 a couple of years ago, where they were all gathered round him beating out a rhythm on the drums and shouting, “who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?” at the top of their voices. Our secondary pupils are equally impressed and love it when he comes to visit.
I’ve had to tear myself away from long, lazy lunches and watching the Olympics (and isn’t Greco-Roman wrestling a fascinating sport!) to return to school, well all good things must come to an end…
