Meet Your Neighbors

Project Theme: English Language Learner (ELL) inclusion and support

Target Audience and Location: School community at Bayside High school in Virginia Beach, VA. 

Mission: Introducing the English Language Learner (ELL) community to the school’s student body through a series of events which highlight various cultures, provide bilingual resources and offer resources. 

Project Description: Inspired by both experiences as an immigrant and former ELL student, Scholar Bubuney Havi, along with her educator Scholar, Maureen Loflin, designed their project to focus on promoting cultural awareness and inclusion at their school. Bubuney shared that from her personal experience, “Transitioning into a new environment where the culture and language are different can be very difficult and it is even harder when it feels like you are alone or not welcome.”

Bubuney and her team plan to engage ELL students who represent the five most represented cultures in the ELL program at their school. They will create video podcasts, recording their narratives and experiences so that the wider student body can learn more about where their family comes from, their culture and what their experience has been like as an ELL student. Each video will be shown to all classes during their advisory period and will be accompanied with some facilitation prompts teachers and students can use afterwards to facilitate a conversation. In addition, they will host a bilingual book drive focused on collecting books from diverse authors and cultures which will fill the bookshelves of the ELL classroom which culminates in a community gathering where ELL and non-ELL students can connect over food.

Watch this team’s project presentation at our virtual showcase event!