Integration Week 2010
1st - 5th March
Flying High
This year’s theme is “The Eyes” and we are asked to consider our vision for the new Northern Ireland which is beginning to take shape. The shape Northern Ireland takes will be determined by us! Our inspiration this year comes from the words of Albert Szent Gyorgi. A Scientist, he won the Nobel Prize in 1937. He is credited with detecting Vitamin C. He wrote: “Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought.”
6% of children in Northern Ireland now attend integrated schools. If we learn in school to integrate, we can teach others to do the same. If we can teach others to integrate, everyone can learn from us that it is fun to have friends who are different! It is fun to try something new. It is fun to help others to learn. Life can be enjoyable if we want it to be!
Our launch Assembly encouraged members of Oakgrove to reflect on the fact that we see things all the time but sometimes never look or take in what is beneath the surface. Integration Week is one opportunity to reflect and to look under the surface at people and things we see all the time, on relationships we have with others in or out of school, and at our own lives.
This week’s aim is to bring people in the Oakgrove community closer to each other. Integrated Form Classes put together people who are different in terms of age. Families are grouped together in some cases so that people who do not normally mix with their siblings in school can do so. You might think differently about your brother or sister when sitting in a classroom!
Last week, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra played in North Korea, bridging a divide between nations. One member said it’s good to bring people together: “You don’t spit in the face of someone smiling at you.” Integration Week is our chance to smile at people around us, to look differently at them. We shouldn’t assume that people who are older or younger won’t be interested in us. We should give others a chance to show what we’re really like.
Integration Week is once a year. For some Oakgrovers, it’s a first. For others, it’s the 15th and last. Let’s make it work for everyone, so all of us can have fun integrating. Go on! Turn your frown upside down! Give yourself a chance. Get to know others. Smile. Be happy! Integrate!