Over the last month, we as a faculty have been working to deepen our understanding of what it means to be intercultural. Based on our current enrolments we have exactly 51 nationalities present in our student community. We come from;

Korea, Turkey, USA, Azerbaijan, UK, Russia, Spain, Germany, Japan, Iran, France, Pakistan, China, India, Italy, Brazil, Ukraine, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, Iraq, Syria, Czech Republic, Egypt, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Sweden, Greece, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, South Africa, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Ireland, Mongolia, Montenegro, Portugal, Turkmenistan, Vietnam.

We have been considering ways to strengthen how we explore the concept of interculturalism beyond the celebration —food, festivals, famous people, fashion, and flags. We wish to explore what it means to be intercultural and truly internationally-minded. We believe that this is possible by weaving international mindedness into our school's standards, instruction, climate, and assessment. This way we will be able to provide students with a means to think deeply and develop global and international mindedness along with knowledge and respect for commonalities and differences.

First, we felt that we needed to come up with a shared definition of what interculturalism means to us here at MEF IS. A couple of workshops and surveys later we agreed on the following definition:

Interculturalism at MEF IS is a dynamic discourse that fosters: knowledge and respect; the search for commonalities and a celebration of differences; international mindedness and a peaceful, ethical and progressive society.

To further strengthen this concept, we will be strengthening the intercultural strands in our lessons, curriculum planning and instruction. MEF IS each year celebrates UN Week. Please see the Primary and the Secondary News and Events pages for how you, or your child can get involved in UN Week next week.