Years ago, following a holiday concert I had just conducted at a small Vermont elementary school, a parent approached me with a complaint. The holidays are the perfect time to engage your students with seasonal-themed activities. One of the best ways to create an inclusive holiday celebration is to avoid the pitfalls of stereotypical foods and Santa hats by using the season as a time of giving. The cards include legal documentation and lesson plan ideas that pass constitutional muster. St. Nicholas Day. Services, Working Scholars® Bringing Tuition-Free College to the Community. Additionally, not every person who celebrates Christmas even has a tree. They can present their findings to the classroom, and the ideas can be used to inspire a multicultural holiday celebration. Even if our holiday celebrations look different within our classroom there's no denying the whismy of the bright lights on people's homes and the songs we hear. Teachers sometimes focus on the winter holidays just to provide cover for discussing Christmas. While teaching a multicultural curriculum may not be too challenging most of the year, December brings the holidays, when one or two holidays are usually much more visible than the others. Learn About Each Other This time of year, students are excited about the holidays. Keene, New Hampshire, where I teach music today, is a relatively secular community. When beginning a lesson about the winter holidays right around Thanksgiving, I ask the question, “What is one thing many of the winter holiday traditions have in common?” Among many correct answers, the one I am looking for is “light.” The stories, traditions, and lore of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and even Chinese New Year contain things like stars, fireworks, lamps, candles, and fire. We’ve made it through the beginning of another school year. Be sure to celebrate holidays that are relevant to the children in your care. Most importantly, teaching children about the holidays guides them into lifelong learning and into thoughtfully and reflectively celebrating their own holidays within our diverse society. The holidays are unavoidable, but you can be prepared to create an inclusive celebration in the classroom that goes beyond tacking up symbolic holiday images on your classroom bulletin board. © copyright 2003-2021 Study.com. The holidays can be used to explore how people of diverse backgrounds practice similar values. “So why can’t you sing about Jesus?” Public school teachers know that the answer is tied up in the U.S. Constitution, but the question did prompt me to ask myself a question that I still ponder today. In December, students are excited to get time off school and, in some cases, to celebrate their special traditions. Those don't often make the best combinations in the classroom. One can teach about the holidays from October all the way through May, beginning with the harvest and the holidays of Halloween and Diwali and ending with the rituals of Passover, Easter, and May Day. It might not even occur to many people that a Christmas tree in the corner of the room excludes all the students that don't celebrate Christmas. Halloween, following the bounty of the harvest season, is the beginning of the dark time of the year, a scary period for early agrarian societies. For more on how to plan Morning Meetings that will help with classroom management at this time of year, see Mike Anderson’s “Handling the Holidays” series from December 2009 on the Responsive blog.. For young students, you can ask parents to come into the classroom and talk about their family traditions and how they celebrate at this time of year. As Hanukkah comes to a close and Christmas approaches, many teachers will decorate with candy canes, glittered Christmas trees and construction-papered dreidels. Many of our students do celebrate these holidays, and they are important. Select holidays and religious celebrations based on your classroom representation. In many schools, […] But Hanukkah isn't considered a High Holiday for Jewish families. In addition to focusing on familial traditions, you can avoid clichés by following the guidelines below. Celebrating holidays in the classroom inclusively is an opportunity for educators to teach students about different belief systems, including atheism. Each student and their family will celebrate the holidays differently. This exposes students to different traditions even among the same religion. Anti-bias teaching requires critical thinking and problem solving by both children and adults.” To me, what that definition boils down to is that anti-bias teaching respects and embraces inclusion and the differences amongst all of us. We’ve made it through the sneak peek, Thanksgiving break, and resettled students as they came back from break. By Signing up, you agree to our privacy policy. Rewriting "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and The Polar Express Ranell Cox, a teacher in Ponte Vedra, Florida, challenges her class to develop a new theme and lyrics for the familiar carol "The Twelve Days of … Students can collect items for care packages for service members overseas, collect canned foods, draw pictures for nursing home residents or host a bake sale to raise money for a certain charity. When talking about whether or not to celebrate holidays in the classroom, you may have heard about something called “the December dilemma.” According to Diversity Best Practices , the December dilemma refers to “that time of year where multiple holidays collide and people with good intentions can find themselves in the middle of potentially toxic misunderstandings.” One can teach about the holidays from October all the way through May, beginning with the harvest and the holidays of Halloween and Diwali and ending with the rituals of … by TeachThought Staff. For example, plan on celebrating Cinco de Mayo if there are Hispanic or Latino children in your classroom. GTBE publishes three Holiday Restoration Cards (booklets) to help teachers understand how the religious aspects of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter can be taught in the classroom. It will be a fun activity that will get your family in the holiday spirit, and spice up your snack time with healthy treats. 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