The Holiday Dilemma

 

Around the holidays, teachers forums light up with questions and comments about what to teach about winter holidays in public schools.  Questions generally surround around not upsetting parents, and whether it is really a part of the curriculum.  For most curriculums, holidays are NOT a part of the curriculum – for better or worse.  However, this doesn’t stop most teachers from including holidays in their activities during the winter months.  Generally, we integrate it into our writing, our read alouds and of course build in some fun, crafty activities.

Personally, I think that holidays should be a part of our curriculum, not as a craft opportunity, but as a teaching opportunity - as long as they are presented in a way that promotes acceptance of people and understanding of cultures.  When Christmas is presented as the only holiday that happens this time of year, it leaves out a part of your population and gives those who celebrate Christmas the idea that everyone in the world is the same as them.  This does a disservice to both groups of children – those who celebrate Christmas and those who don’t. 

Holidays present us with the opportunity to let kids discover cultures around the world that they didn’t even know existed.  It also provides us with the opportunity to show students that cultures and holidays are more similar than they are different.

When I was teaching 1st grade at an American school in Morocco, I was asked to prepare a song for with my students to present in the “Winter Holidays Show”.  I looked around at my options, knowing I didn’t want to sing a Christmas song with a population of students who were mainly Muslim.  The winter songs like “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” didn’t make much sense either – not in a country that only sees snow in one or two mountain towns.  By chance, I stumbled across a song called Eid is Here on YouTube.  This song was based out of India and talked about Christmas, Eid and Diwali.  What I loved most about the song was that it talked about the things in each holiday that were the same.  Each holiday gave people a chance to:  wear new clothes, eat special foods, spend time with family and friends and use special lights.  While my students and I learned the song, we were able to learn about different holidays, but compare how they were similar.  This was a concept that the kids easily grasped and one that allowed them to see each other in a new light, as someone who did things similar to how they themselves did things.

 

This experience encouraged me to write the reader’s theater: Light Up the World with Celebrations for a similar group of children.  Before we performed the reader’s theater, we learned about a large variety of celebrations from countries and cultures around the world who use light as a part of their celebrations.  I presented the information to my students using my Winter Holidays Power Point, and then we created a chart to help us compare and contrast different holidays.

 

   

Last year, I worked with some bloggers from around the world to create a Holiday Cookbook for Kids, full of recipes that are often found at holiday celebrations around the world, as special foods is another common feature of holiday celebrations worldwide. 

 

No matter what holidays your students do or don’t celebrate, knowing about holidays celebrations around the world can help your students to identify that celebrations are a time for people to get together with family and friends, eat special foods, have special lights or decorations, wear special clothes, and be happy as a group.  You may also talk about charity to others, as this is a part of many, many celebrations worldwide. Ignoring holidays in the classroom prevents true conversation about different cultures and pigeonholes students into thinking that all people are – and should be – the same. 

So, during this winter holiday season, be sure to discuss holidays and how they bring people together.  Include diverse holiday stories, encourage students to share how they celebrate different holidays, invite in guest speakers, do research on new holidays, watch videos about how holidays are celebrated in different countries, and throughout it all, encourage your students to look for those common themes that bring people together to celebrate and be happy.

 

Process or Performance? – Checkin’ in with Courtney

 

I had the amazing privilege to teach with one of the best teachers in the world last year.  While we taught together, she provided me with inspiration – for my classroom and my blog – like no one else I’ve ever taught with.  Luckily for you guys, she has agreed to periodically share with us what is going on in her classroom.  Today is the first edition of Checkin’ in with Courtney.  For more of Courtney’s awesomeness, you can check our her class Weebly.  

 

I have both attended and taught in schools that value that final, glittery production far over the process of theatre. Being that my first true love is theatre, this pains me. Luckily, I decided to change the course of my life in April of my senior year in high school. I broke the news to my parents and auditioned for a conservatory program in theatre arts. Although I later went back to school for teaching, I spent years performing (and plan to continue) before, during, and after the start of my teaching career. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that productions with parent-made costumes, purchased props and premade sets aren’t enjoyable, but you have to ask yourself, “How much of this was created by the kids?” and “Are the children enjoying it, or are they stressing over remembering that one line they just couldn’t memorize?”

 

I heard a drama teacher once say to young students on the stage, “You can’t start acting until you memorize your lines!” From that day forward I vowed to empower children with the love of and culture of theatre. This year I am teaching Y5-7 (grade 4-6) drama. I wanted their first performance to contain all of the theater elements, to be stress free and most importantly to MATTER TO THEM. I decided that we would focus on The Rights of the Child and that we would perform during our morning meeting on United Nations Day. Additionally, I planned that the kids would write their own scripts, make their own props and use their scripts on the stage. From the beginning I told them it would be a staged reading. With this, they learned that not all productions have to be memorized. (My first paying gig was a staged reading, in which I held my script on stage). This lesson also helped them to understand:

1.You indeed can act with a piece of paper in your hand.

2. You must hold the paper low so that it does not hide your face and muffle your voice.

3. You can lose yourself in the character and not worry about which line comes next.

 

Over four 40-minute lessons, the students worked in groups of 2 or 3. They each selected one of the children’s rights to focus on. They created roles and cast classmates in their skits, made necessary props, wrote a 2-minute skit and practiced basic blocking and acting on the stage. From this came some of the best work I have seen. Today was the first day everyone held the scripts on stage and we practiced for the meeting later this week. We just needed one 40-minute rehearsal! Not only did they act without nerves and insecurities, they constructively critiqued each other as audience members.

 

Group One:

This group focused on the right to have a birth certificate (they went to sign their five year old up for Kindergarten and were rejected for not having a birth certificate).

Group Two:

The next group set the stage with three students typing on kid-made, paper laptops, two evil teachers lurk behind them and throw two of the students into “the vault”, the third student researches on the computer and finds out that children should not be punished in a way that hurts or humiliates them, they call the police, and the skit ends with the students teaching the audience the rights of the child.

Group Three:

The last group set their skit in the Ukraine where two children are playing outside. Soldiers come and take the children. A policewoman near by sees what is happening, frees the kids and tells the audience that children have the right to play.

In the end, I think their performances were far more profound than some can be. It is not always about the glitz and glamour…sometimes it is about kids- learning, processing, creating….and HAVING FUN!