holidays

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Home : 2002 : July : 17

holidays
By Cathy-Dee

We celebrate these holidays in our school.

Thanksgiving
Halloween
Remembrance Day
Christmas
St. Patrick's Day
Easter
Valentine's Day

Along with some of the fun days like
Groundhog Day
April Fool's
Day

Each teacher makes their own decisions on how much they do with the holiday. The younger grades tend to do more. Overall we tend to focus more on Christmas and Easter than the other holidays. Most of the time is spent on things like crafts, stories, poems, songs. And from my observations most of the teachers in my school also regularly discuss the other holidays celebrating

during those times too. I know the grade 3 teachers do a theme called Christmas around the world and take a look at how Christmas is celebrated and if it isn't, what other holidays might be celebrated around the same time.

While I understand the need for honouring diversity within our schools I STRONGLY feel that the answer is not removing all the "Christian" holidays, but instead celebrating them along with any holidays of any of the other main cultural groups within the school.

And I think at times we worry way too much about being so fair to some groups within our schools that we end up taking away from other groups. I was raised as a Christian and many of my students have been as well. While I have no problem teaching about the other holidays that may be celebrated in other cultures, I do have a problem if it means I have to take out holidays I celebrate and especially those holidays that have a very STRONG history in our countries.

Now if I ended up some day teaching in a community where the school was 80 or 90% Jewish for example, then of course I would be in the minority and would expect that any holidays celebrated would focus on the Jewish holidays instead. Hopefully it would still mean that my holidays and how I celebrate could be mentioned and even a small part of them celebrated.