From the Head of School

Internationalism at ISA

My wife and I married in China, and some time later came to the UK with our first child.  For me, it was coming back, as I am English, my parents were English, my grandparents were English.  For my wife, who is Chinese, it was her first trip here.  She, like our daughter, was born in China: both were Chinese citizens.

My wife’s parents told her to only speak English living here, and to only speak English with our daughter, not to seek out a Chinese community and to mix with British people.  

Their advice imagined a very common model of integration.  The idea that you had to choose between national identities and then, when you moved to a place, you had to ‘fit in.’

That was the 1990s. At ISA in 2023, we don’t expect students to be definitely one thing or another: our students are part of a diverse community and they themselves are diverse.  

Upstairs, outside our theatre there is a display of Grade 9 art, expressions of students’ sense of self.  Each painting has an introduction to the artist.  Daania, for example, says (fairly categorically)  “I am from Indonisia” then goes on to tell us that she was born in Dubai before living in Indonesia for a couple of years, then moving to the Congo, France and now the UK.  Sofia describes herself as half Kazakhstan, half English - but from Scotland where she has lived most her life  Oluwaseun, on the other hand, is from Nigeria, despite being born in Georgia and living 13 years in the UK.

Next Thursday we will have our first international festival since October 2019.  The culmination back then was an ‘international parade’ where we would showcase all the ISA nationalities - a list we downloaded from the powerschool passport field -  a student’s identity designated by an official document.  But as the Grade 9 art display shows us - that is often not how students see themselves: they are far more diverse and complex than a single document allows.  They want the right to say who they are.  Their own voice about themselves.  

You will see that at our international festival next Thursday.  It will be a great evening of food, performances, costumes and stories.  It will, like before, culminate in a parade.  But students will not have to choose a single flag to attach themselves to; they will march together with their classmates holding all the flags and other markers of what is important to them.  

At ISA we are both individual and diverse.  We always walk together.   We can be a single community without all becoming the same.