International Week at AISCT

There is a powerful sense of pride when our learners and teachers adorn their traditional dress and showcase their heritage and culture to the school community. Equally, the amazing array of colors, outfits, and flags create a powerful sense of how unified our global community at AISCT actually is. The Parade of Nations, which sees our learners, staff, and parents marching around our field in their country group with the youngest and oldest students from each country leading the way, fosters this unity while celebrating diversity.

Many of our learners call many places home. It is common that their parents come from different countries or cultures or that they have lived in many different countries already. This phenomenon, known in the research community as a Third Culture Kid (TCK), describes a child who has spent a significant amount of time in a culture or cultures outside of their own. In the Parade of Nations, many students choose to walk with the country they were born in, some the country of their passport, and still others the country in which they have lived the longest, all showing us what it means to be global citizens.

TCKs form one important sub-cultural with our community, joining expatriates who have definitive ties to their home country and local South Africans who have always lived here. Often in these situations, the term “melting pot” is used to describe a community, meaning where people of diverse origins fuse to make a new environment. As shared by Dr. Daniel Jubert, AISCT Head of School, “I prefer to use the term ‘cultural mosaic’ where our various groups maintain their distinctiveness while functioning as part of the whole.” This was on full display during the Parade of Nations.