Culture Day

Last Friday the school I am currently performing my junior field at held a Culture Day, an opportunity for children to wear the attire that represents their culture as part of their Spirit Week festivities. Many students throughout the school participated and multiple cultures were represented including Indian, Portuguese, Chinese, Greek, and many more. I thought it was a really neat idea and found that the kids were really excited to get a chance to talk about their cultural background.
I think it is important to make students from different cultures comfortable and willing to open up and most importantly give the students around them the recognition and knowledge that there are people in the world who are different from them and they should be accepting and welcoming of those people.
To address this special day, my cooperating teacher asked the students who participated and dressed in the traditional garb in each of her classes to share a little bit of the background of their culture and outfits. Afterwards, the students were instructed to write a reflection in their journal on the importance of having different types of cultures around the world. I really appreciated the idea of Culture Day and believe it can definitely have a lot to offer especially in diverse classrooms where ELL students can be found. These students will appreciate the day dedicated to sharing a part of who they are with their classmates. A great idea would be to extend Culture Day to a week-long event including guest speakers, a chance for students to bring in traditional dishes from their culture, and additional time to learn about the various cultures that are represented throughout their school across all of their curricular subjects.