Multicultural Education

28 March 2012

Last week, I posted a little about an Easter presentation that I did with one of my 4th grade classes. I realize that the presentation (and the post) was very monocultural.

In order to redeem myself, I'm going to write about the multicultural spring presentation that I did with my 6th graders. Unfortunately, with some of my younger classes, I can't get into as much detail with them as I would like. It tends to be a struggle for them to just understand me. However, with my older kids, we can have better (and more mature) conversations about multiculturalism.

Today, with 6th grade, I shared a presentation about holidays that celebrate the end of winter and the start of spring--which is a common theme in most cultures. In order to keep them engaged, I turned the presentation into a game to review the past tense.

I'm a little ashamed of this game--not because it didn't work--but because it's a little lame. In between each slide of the presentation, I gave the class a verb to conjugate in the past. One person from each team had to go to the board to write the answer. The first team to write it correctly earned a point. I discovered that even though this game was kind of lame (in my opinion) the kids loved it! They went crazy for points even though the winning team didn't get anything.

I'm ashamed admit that two of the holidays I talked to the kids about are holidays that I heard of for the first time last year. Last year, I attended an event on my college campus which was a three-way celebration of three spring holidays--Carnival, Holi, and Purim. It was really interesting to see how much these holidays have in common--even though they have vastly different origins!

I started the presentation by talking about the Christian holiday of Easter--instead of Carnival.

Then, I described the Hindu holiday of Holi. Also known as the Festival of Colors, Holi celebrates the faith of Prahlad when he managed to escape being burned alive. According to the story, Hiranyakashipu tries to kill his son Prahlad because he thinks that Prahlad has betrayed him. However, none of Hiranyakashipu's attempts work. Finally, Hiranyakashipu tries to have his son burned alive by making him sit on the lap of Holika (who apparently can't be burned by fire), but Prahlad prays to Vishnu for his intervention. Prahlad remains unharmed but Holika is consumed by the fire. This holiday is celebrated with bonfires and people throw colored perfumed powder.

Next, I talked about the Jewish holiday of Purim. This holiday celebrates the story of Esther. Jewish people go to the synagogue on Purim to hear the recounting of this story. When the "bad guy's" name is mentioned, people make noise in order to drown out his name. According to the story, the king was looking for a new wife and chose Esther. At the time, Esther is in disguise and doesn't reveal that she is Jewish. However, the king's adviser, Haman, plots to kill all the Jewish people. In order to prevent this, Esther tells the king that she is Jewish in order to convince him to override Haman's attempt to kill the Jews. In doing so, Esther saves her people.