Lets use the Blog to generate some ideas for a Diversity Celebration. The window is short, but the tree lighting ceremony is November 30th. Perhaps we can use this in some way to communicate what we are doing. Additionally, it may be nice to build on the holidays and work in the various cultural celebrations that will be going on.
Thoughts?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
A Diversity Celebration "with food" is the idea that I remember that came out of our group. At the time, I had a picture in my head of a "Giant Diversity Potluck" held in one of the school gyms. All preparations and clean-up would have to be done by Circle Volunteers, and it would have to be on some evening (or weekend afernoon?) when nothing else is happening at the school. Is this a strange idea?
Yes I agree with you. That is the mental picture that I had as well. What I am looking at though is a very short window to make anything happen before the holidays. The thought to parlay something with the tree lighting ceremony gives us only a month. Add to the mix all the currently scheduled school concerts as well as just the normal stuff - play/sport practices, etc. and it seems pretty hard to do.
I am wondering if we can't pull something together that might draw on holiday songs, MHS/Stevenson theater groups, some musicians from the school bands, and perhaps giving out the School Resource Guide, or a holiday card celebrating diversity on behalf of the Study Circle Initiative. Perhaps we could look to student art for the card too. Something that shows people working together.
Maybe we could offer a group reading of Capote's Christmas Story. This seems to be pretty holiday neutral from a religious standpoint and celebrates the spirit of the season by doing things for others, even if you don't have a lot of resources to work with.
The food-based school project might be better in Quarter 1 2008 when the holidays are over and there seems to be more time to plan.
Gigi said:
...in response to the blog about Cultural Diversity, I went to one over the weekend…
My sister in law invited us to their cultural gathering at her church in Naperville. It happened over a 2-day period to cover Saturday night and Sunday masses. They had it for every mass times. She brought in 200 pound barbeque pork from Chinatown. She represented the Chinese culture even though she doesn't speak it or knows anything about the Chinese except from what the history books have taught us. She's also part German, part Irish, and mostly part English.
Anyway, it was a very festive event with lots of folk dancing and lots of great food. No one was dressed in their native costumes except the dancers. I thought it would be better if they did. One Italian-American family had a whole board filled with their family history, with their grandfather's immigration papers from Italy. It was really cool.
Gigi,
That's actually a very cool idea to have kids make boards of their family history, showing where they immigrated from. It would make the point that all of us are, in fact, immigrants. I casually asked Sonia if she would consider dressing in her kimono if we were to have a diversity celebration, and she was (surprisingly) very excited and eager.
I think we have enough great ideas and energy to pull off a really cool Diversity Celebration sometime in the new year on some date on the calendar when there isn't a lot else going on.
I do see Tom's point, though, that making use of the tree-lighting ceremony in Mundelein would be good. I liked his ideas a lot (see the blog) But I fear time is running out, however, unless it we act fast.
What think you all?
Post a Comment