Zhang Qian

    zhqcindy@163.com

    Primary students at Shen Wai International School in Nanshan District donned colorful costumes to represent different countries in celebration of the United Nation’s 70th anniversary of establishment last Friday.

    The school set the theme of this year’s U.N. International Day as “Being a Global Citizen” in the hope of raising student awareness of thinking and behaving like global citizens.

    A parade took place around 9 a.m. on the school’s playground as the opening event. Parents were invited to watch and participate in the campus activities. Each class showcased their self-designed flags that were created around the idea of global citizenship.

    Students and parents participated in different activities at the school that helped develop the idea of being a global citizen. However, each grade had a different topic the students and their parents could work on.

    For instance, for early-year children, the activities showed the students there were different people and cultures existing in other places of the world. “We used a cartoon to show the kids that many different people are living around the world,” said an early-year teacher named Chris.

    The kindergarten children in one class were asked to design a paper bag they could put things in that they needed when traveling to other countries. For 4-year-old Evan, Paris was his destination, so he delicately pasted stickers of toothpaste and sunglasses on his paper bag.

    Evan’s mother told Shenzhen Daily that the classroom activity was a useful game that gave her son a sense of being a global citizen.

    “We have taken Evan to many countries though he is still very young, and we hope to gradually help him form a global mind that will help him travel to any place on in the world on his own,” said Evan’s mother.

    While the young kids were focusing on hands-on experiences such as making crafts or reading stories, the Grade-5 students were given more challenging tasks such as answering in-depth questions in groups.

    Some of the questions they had to consider were “What does it mean to be a global citizen,” “What are some problems that may be caused if people do not act as global citizens, both local and global” and so forth.

    “I think to be a global citizen means you can fly to anywhere in the world and you do not hold discrimination against anyone with any skin color or background,” said Victoria Zhang, a fifth-grade student at the school.