Newswise — Traditional stereotypes of the holiday season limit it to a time to deck the halls and put up a Christmas tree, but the words can actually encompass much more.
Kathy Holen, assistant professor of elementary education and English as a second language at Kansas State University, said that with a variety of cultures in elementary schools, certain holidays should not be emphasized at the expense of others.
Holen said the most important thing for a teacher to remember is to avoid having a narrow view of what holidays are.
"These days, in diverse classrooms, what have traditionally been observed as the holidays aren't applicable for everybody in the classroom," she said.
People from other cultures have been traditionally excluded with the celebration of Christmas in the classroom. Some schools have excluded Christmas activities from the curriculum to avoid offending people from other cultures. A better approach to this situation would be to include holidays from all around the world -- including Christmas -- in class discussion, Holen said.
"We need to avoid thinking that this causes problems," Holen said. "In fact, this creates very valid teaching moments. That throws the door open for me to personalize things about different cultures, which as an elementary educator, I feel very strongly about doing."
Learning about other cultures and their traditions is a very important part of education, she said.
"The more we understand about each other, the more tolerant we will be," Holen said. "Holidays represent the celebrations within cultures and I think they say a lot of things about that culture."
Holen offered some tips to help educators approach the holidays in their classroom:
1. Invite people from other cultures who live in the community to come and speak to students about their holiday traditions.
2. Distribute surveys to parents. The surveys could ask questions about the family's culture and what holidays they celebrate. Invite parents to share their traditions with their child's class.
3. Display a calendar in the classroom that highlights different holidays around the world each week. Give the students some information about each holiday. Music and food from those cultures could be incorporated into class.
4. Research different cultures to find information about their holidays. With the growth and accessibility of the Internet today, this is something that anyone could do, Holen said.
"Just get on a computer and you can find it," she said.
5. When you travel, bring artifacts back to the classroom to share with students.
"You can look at pictures of something and know about it in general, but unless you see it or experience it, you don't really grasp it," Holen said.
Holen said the things that impact children the most are food, artifacts, clothing and visitors whose native language is not English.
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