Why we are a Language Friendly

Why We Are a Language Friendly School

By Jacob Huckle

Dulwich College Suzhou (DCSZ) is an international school in Jiangsu province in the East of China that offers a Britishstyle curriculum leading to IGCSE and IB Diploma qualifi cations. We have a diverse student body consisting of multilingual students who speak a variety of languages, with the largest linguistic groups other than English being Mandarin and Korean. Our college has a reputation for high-quality English instruction that meets the needs of our different learners. In the senior school, for example, we have a curriculum model based around language pathways that allows us to deliver differentiated English courses to provide appropriate scaffolding and challenge for students with different language profi les, which is supported by fi rst-language courses in Mandarin and Korean.

At the same time, I think it’s important we also recognise that most schools – even those with culturally and linguistically diverse student and staff bodies – are underpinned by a monolingual bias (Barratt, 2018) that infl uences everything from curriculum to assessment. So, at DCSZ, we want to ensure we’re intentionally shifting our policies, practices, and beliefs towards ‘embracing multilingualism as a means of learning, a way of life, and a cherished value of our [community]’ (Soto & Gottlieb, 2020: 178). This transition from monolingualism to multilingualism is one of the essential shifts schools should undergo to ensure success for all learners (Soto & Gottlieb, 2020). We want to keep developing to ensure that we are truly living our values, including this core value in our school:

We value the rich diversity of our students and families and support all students to be multilingual learners.

What does it mean for an international school to truly value the linguistic and cultural diversity of its community? What does an international school that seriously embraces multilingualism look like? At Dulwich College Suzhou, we’ve been working through these questions during the last couple of years as we seek ways to become more inclusive and leverage the cultures and languages within our school.

The IB describes multilingualism as a fact, a right, and a resource (IB, 2011). It’s a fact that international schools are multilingual and all children have the right to learn the languages of their family, the languages of the community in which they are living, and the language

of instruction in the school. This gives us a big responsibility to explore all the possible ways of tapping into those languages as resources to enrich the learning of all. For us, an important step towards realising this vision in our context was to become a Language Friendly School. In 2021, we became a member of the Language Friendly School network, an initiative of the Rutu Foundation for Intercultural Multilingual Education based in the Netherlands that brings together a diverse range of schools from around the world, all committed to valuing the languages spoken in their communities.

As the organisation’s website (www. languagefriendlyschool.org) states: ‘All schools should aim to become linguistically and culturally inclusive, meaning they recognize and embrace their students’ multilingualism, and take action to give space to these languages within the school community’. The Language Friendly School mission is rooted in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Sustainable Development Goal 4. The Language Friendly School organisation helps schools to take practical steps to ensure they, in their own contexts, are delivering ‘equitable quality education’ for all learners, which ‘is only possible when education responds to and reflects the multilingual nature of the society’ (UNESCO, 2017).

All Language Friendly Schools are supported to develop a language plan that acts as a roadmap for creating a linguistically and culturally inclusive school environment. For us, this aligned well with work we’d already started as part of our regular school Language Policy review, and gave our plans for improvement in this area more focus.

At DCSZ this academic year, one of our senior school strategic goals has been to implement an intentional translanguaging approach that promotes multilingualism for all students as well as enables students to use their home languages as resources for learning. To achieve this, we’ve had professional development sessions focused on how all teachers can draw upon students’ other languages in their subject lessons. We’ve also recently established a Language, Culture, and Inclusion Committee, a student group that will work collaboratively to identify ways of becoming more inclusive and celebrating the cultures and languages in our community. We plan to build on this further by offering a parent course focused on raising multilingual children, which we hope will help build a shared vision throughout our whole school community.

Beyond supporting us to develop our roadmap, I think being part of the Language Friendly School network also brings a number of other significant benefits: • We have been able to attend Language Friendly

School network meetings which provide 

All Language Friendly Schools are supported to develop a language plan that acts as a roadmap for creating a linguistically and culturally inclusive school environment.

valuable opportunities to collaborate and share ideas and resources with like-minded professionals around the world. • Becoming a certified Language Friendly School was a chance to celebrate and share our vision for multilingualism more broadly in our community.

This gave us momentum and motivation to keep working on this important area. • We now have clear, student- and parent-friendly language to use as we communicate our mission: we are language friendly! This will allow us to build a shared understanding of the importance of multilingualism and get everyone on the same page. As a large college made up of three separate schools, being language friendly is a clear vision that can build coherence across the campus. • As a Language Friendly School, we can not only receive guidance on our development plans from language experts, but we have another layer of accountability to ensure we are doing everything we can to meet our goals.

Becoming a Language Friendly School is one step towards meeting our responsibility to ensure that we are a school that ‘not only reflects and celebrates the multiculturality of every individual but also uses it to drive every aspect of the school’s ethos and philosophy of education’ (Staricoff, 2021). It is clear that being language friendly is beneficial for all: it affirms the identities of our multilingual learners but also leverages the cultural and linguistic diversity in our classrooms to enrich and deepen learning for all, including students who are not yet multilingual. In the words of Emmanuelle Le Pichon and Ellen-Rose Kambel, ‘Language Friendly Schools seem to have a resonance that goes far beyond the inclusion of languages and cultures, allowing the blossoming of each person in their own difference’ (Le Pichon & Kambel, 2022) ◆

Jacob Huckle teaches at Dulwich College Suzhou, China and is a part-time doctoral student. ✉ jacob.huckle@dulwich.org

References

• Barratt L (2018) Monolingual Bias. In M DelliCarpini (ed) The

TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching. Hoboken,

NJ: Wiley. • IB (2011) Language and Learning in IB Programmes, Cardiff:

International Baccalaureate. • Le Pichon E and Kambel E R (2022) The Language Friendly

School: An Inclusive and Equitable Pedagogy. Childhood

Education. 98:1, 42-49. • Soto I and Gottlieb M (2020) From Monolingualism to

Multilingualism. In M E Calderón et al (eds) Breaking Down the Wall: Essential Shifts for English Learners’ Success. London:

Corwin. [pp 160-182] • Staricoff M (2021) Multilingual Thinking in Multicultural

Classrooms. Available at my.chartered.college/research-hub/ multilingual-thinking-in-multicultural-classrooms/ • UNESCO (2017) Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education:

The Key to Unlocking SDG 4 Quality Education for All. Available at unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000247333