On February 21st, we celebrated International Mother Tongue Day, a meaningful occasion that invites us to reflect on the importance of one’s mother tongue as a fundamental part of personal identity and a key element in learning.At our school, the Multilingualism Department supports students as they integrate into a new linguistic and cultural environment. Our approach is guided by a core principle: valuing and strengthening each student’s mother tongue as a solid foundation for acquiring the school’s languages of instruction, Spanish and English.To mark this celebration, students who are currently learning Spanish worked with riddles and tongue twisters over the course of two weeks. Later, together with their families, they explored the same activities in their own languages. This allowed us to step into their linguistic world and experience the richness of their cultures in a meaningful and hands-on way.As part of our traditional Carnival gymkhana, we created a special station where students were challenged to identify the language of different riddles and, with the support of a translator, try to solve them. They also listened to, read and attempted to repeat tongue twisters in various languages, experiencing both the challenge and the joy of communicating in a new language.It was a meaningful and enjoyable experience that helped us better understand what it means to adapt to a new culture while preserving one’s roots. Integration does not mean losing who you are; it means growing through diversity.As Nelson Mandela once said:“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head.If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”Carolina GalaHead of the Languages Department
