Meadows students get taste of other cultures

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This article was published 26/02/2016 (3753 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Students at Meadows School got a chance to travel around the world on Thursday, during the elementary school’s third annual Culture Day celebrations.

Ten classrooms were transformed into elaborate cultural displays representing countries like South Africa, Scotland, Mauritia, Australia and many more.

“Each middle-years classroom has picked a country or a culture to represent, so they do the research on it and make their room into this amazing pavillion, so it’s a learning experience,” Meadows principal David Lim said. “The great thing is that they’re learning from each other.”

Armed with passports, students from kindergarten to Grade 8 spent the day touring the school and learning about the traditional food, fashion and festivities of different countries from their peers.

For the past two weeks, teachers and students have been making decorations and costumes in preparation of Culture Day.

Colourful mandalas and large murals of Indian landmarks and leaders covered the walls of the classroom representing the South Asian country. Meadows educational assistant Gayatri Patel helped teach the students about Indian culture.

“In Indian culture, we celebrate lots of different festivals (that) belong to our gods, so they can learn about our gods. But also we have lots of wonders in India, so we made paintings likes the Taj Mahal … and we also made our national father (Mahatma Gandhi),” Patel said.

Grade 3/4 teacher Trevor Heydens says Patel’s lessons have made a big impact on his students.

“They’ve been very engaged with the learning process. Every day they’ve found something interesting, and I’ve had my students over the past two weeks eagerly asking me to do more research beyond what we’ve been talking about in class,” Heydens said.

Upstairs, the Trinidad and Tobago room took visitors on a Caribbean vacation, complete with a limbo pole, steel drums and a sandy beach. The Grade 5/6 students were decked out in colourful handmade costumes — a nod to the country’s annual carnival.

Dressed in red, Grade 6 student Nash Granger­ was sporting a mask with a long beak protruding from it.

“I am a scarlet ibis, it’s like the national bird of Trinidad and Tobago,” Granger said, adding that he spent two months researching the island country. “I have learned that they are the third richest country in North America because of all of their oil industry and their gas.”

Granger says he looks forward to the school’s yearly cultural event.

“I think they’re really fun … I like the food and just seeing what every class has done,” he said.

Culture Day got its start at King George School while Lim was principal there, and he opted to bring the event to Meadows when he transferred to the new school three years ago.

“We want our different cultures to be visible here because we’re all part of the community and it makes our school so much more vibrant,” Lim said.

When the event first started, some students were hesitant to share their cultural traditions with their classmates.

“They were kind of like ‘We just want to be like everyone else,’ and they were embarrassed,” Lim said. “It’s a tradition now that we’re very proud of, kids are proud of their background and that they can speak another language.”

Thursday’s celebrations wrapped up with a school-wide assembly and cultural talent show.

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