The Chinese New Year was fully embraced at St. Charles College on February 5th, 2019, where staff and students came together as a school community dressed in red to celebrate. The students received beautifully red wrapped mandarin oranges from the breakfast club, which symbolizes good luck and friendship in the Chinese culture.

A traditional lunch, which consisted of dumplings, pork rice, spring rolls and almond cookies was served to students in the English Café, a club for all international students. New Year festivities will continue during the month of February at lunch for students to participate and learn about various traditions of the Chinese culture. Workshops on calligraphy, dragon art and a friendly chopstick competition will be held in the learning commons. These workshops will be led by our international students and partners in the community like the YMCA and Laurentian University’s international student program.

St. Charles College students from three different clubs, the International English Café, Model United Nations Club and Student Council worked in collaboration in promoting and organizing their country booths to create such a successful annual food festival.

The international food fair was comprised of 25 countries from around the world that predominantly symbolized the cultural diversity that is most evident throughout the school. Countries like China, Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Greece, Italy and much more were represented with fine décor, music and home made food .

The importance of this event was to allow students and teachers to come together as a school community to promote an inclusive learning environment, while taking an interest in building cultural diversity within the school. The students gained a thorough understanding of the importance of multiculturalism through our community.

The event was held Thursday, November 15th, from 10:00-1:00pm; where over 700 students from grades 7-12 participated, enjoyed the delicious foods and learned about the various countries on display.

Today was about welcoming and celebrating our international students in taking a big leap forward and stepping out of their comfort zone to meet new friends and build on their English speaking skills. Every Tuesday and Thursday during lunch, the English Café run by Mrs. Blackwell and Mrs. Sanowar is open not only for international and ELL Learners, but for our domestic students to have the opportunity to introduce themselves and make new friends.
Some of our 9 and 10 English students extended their warm wishes in writing the international students a personal message to welcome them to our SCC community and describe what it means to be a true “Cardinal”.

Mckenna Annett, a grade 9 student writes, “Hi! Welcome to St. Charles. We hope you have a good high school experience here. Remember once a card, always a card! We hope you enjoy sports teams and clubs to meet new people”.

The English Café is a social club that runs interactive cultural activities, games, and dance offs and plans upcoming educational trips to Toronto, Niagara Falls and Killarney throughout the year. This is an interactive space for students to feel comfortable, supported and accepted in sharing their cultural differences.

Our international students can give international experience to our own SCC students, expand our worldview, and learn the value of linguistic and cultural diversity. Our current student population demographics are changing and we are proud – this is significant and life changing for all, as we become a much more welcoming and inclusive society.