My former school, Holmes Middle School, held its first International Diversity Day earlier this year. Holding an event similar to this would be a great way to include information about East Asia and many other cultures in your teaching. I plan to organize a similar event at my new school next year.

The day was divided into three parts: guest speakers, assembly, and video/craft. Each grade level rotated through these parts in a different order. Students were with their homeroom teacher all day. There were two sessions for guest speakers (every class got to see two speakers). A committee recruited enough guest speakers so that they only had to speak to groups of about 40 at at time(one class). The guest speakers prepared a 30 minute presentation on the country they were from or had knowledge of. Guest speakers were assigned to a room and classes rotated to them. We had a great assembly of Sakai Flamenco dancers. This was a great assembly with wonderful performances. I would highly recommend getting this group to perform at your school, but beware: they recruit teachers to go on stage and learn the dance! The students certainly loved it. The third portion of the day feaured two videos and a craft project. One video was about the idea of culture and the other was about food from around the world. Teachers received a list of craft projects a week in advance and chose which one they wanted their class to do. Supplies and instructions were provided by the school. My class made Khamsas and Mandalas, which we finished in homeroom over the next few days.

I had my doubts about how this day would go, especially knowing the behavior and attention span of my homeroom that I would have to deal with all day. I was pleased to discover that my students were interested and engaged the whole day in all of the activities! I thought it was a miracle, but they just really enjoyed learning about culture.

This is yet another way to teach our students about culture. It was not a day devoted to East Asia, but there was a lot of information about East Asia included in the day. Students were talking about things they learned that day for a long time after Diversity Day.