Thought for the Week

This week’s ‘thought for the week’ was delivered by Callum C and Charlotte F, both prefects in Year 13, with the message of recognising cultural diversity. They also shared their personal experiences of making friends with people from different backgrounds. 

The definition of cultural diversity is the existence of different cultures or ethnic groups within a society. Recognising cultural diversity is important because our country, workplaces and schools increasingly consist of various cultural, racial and ethnic groups. We can all learn from one another. 

Throughout all our lives we are all going to encounter people from different walks of life. In the last Headmasters Assembly, we heard Tony and Rose talk about celebrating the diversity here in school. We want to encourage this further. 

We are very lucky go to a school with such a diverse community and this should be something we celebrate. Wherever you end up after your time at RHS, be that at university, in an apprenticeship, or a job, you are going to continue to meet people from all sorts of different backgrounds. 

We are very fortunate here that we can make friends with people from all over the world. For example, I didn’t know our head boy, Toby. But there was one day that he was delayed going to someone else’s house. Bearing in mind I didn’t know Toby very well he texted me and asked if he could come round for a couple of days as I live close to Stansted. This was obviously no problem at all, and Toby ended up staying for a week. We were in the middle of harvest and Toby jumped in at the deep end and helped us for the week, learning about our way of life at home during harvest and he picked up the lingo very quickly. We quicky established a shared love for horses and Toby spent many an hour with my grandmother exercising my horse for me whilst I was working. He has now become a regular at our house and is an extra member of our family. We have spent many a night around the table talking about his life in Kenya and finding out about their traditions. Another example is our couch to 5k group, there are five of us who go running together, and we are all from different countries such as Ukraine, Mexico, and Bulgaria. 

Being at a school like this has given me the opportunity to try many different activities, one of which was DofE. Part of the Gold award involves attending a residential. This can be anything. I chose to do mine in Swanage (Dorset) and it meant meeting new people. In order to get to know each other and make things less awkward, we started playing games such as two truths and one lie. In this, I found that for a few people, their first language was not English. I first met Cian when dropping our bags off outside our accommodation. We started getting to know each other by asking questions like who our favourite band was and what our favourite food was (huge shock there). He told me he was born in Austria and moved to England when he was ten when his dad received a promotion. Cian told me of some Austrian traditions, and they really intrigued me. I am still good friends with Cian, and we stay connected and are currently organising a time to meet again. 

Our challenge to you this week, is to talk to someone you don’t know well and to find out a bit more about them. Who knows, they might end up as one of your closest friends.