{"id":10950,"date":"2023-04-07T13:49:46","date_gmt":"2023-04-07T17:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=10950"},"modified":"2023-04-07T13:50:15","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T17:50:15","slug":"fairfield-elementary-hosts-lively-multicultural-convention-brings-100-people-to-celebrate-the-power-of-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/fairfield-elementary-hosts-lively-multicultural-convention-brings-100-people-to-celebrate-the-power-of-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Fairfield Elementary hosts lively \u2018Multicultural Convention,\u2019 brings 100 people to celebrate the power of culture"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Arabic Club<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

-Svetla Tomanova<\/em><\/p>\n

Fairfield Elementary welcomed students and their diverse families as well as members of the community to experience and celebrate different cultures. They called the event “Multicultural Convention.”<\/p>\n

The idea for the convention originated from four members of the school community \u2013 the school counselor, the gifted resource teacher, the general assistant and the reading specialist. They collaborated to bring their vision to reality. They also invited students from Tallwood\u2019s Global Studies Academy who showcased language skills and were zealous to share their knowledge about the Filipino, Arabic, Spanish, French and German cultures. Fairfield\u2019s families from Ethiopia and Nepal were on hand to invite people to their cuisine and culture.<\/p>\n

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Moroccan dance<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Principal Lori Gross, who comes from Yugoslav lineage, shared that the goal of this event is to promote cultural awareness, understanding and appreciation, and to bring people from different backgrounds together.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone has a culture,\u201d Gross said. \u201cYou may not be a first generation or a second generation but your culture resides somewhere and we want to celebrate that diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cafeteria was filled with tables decked with informational boards representing different cultures \u2013 from Israeli, Japanese and Chinese to German, Spanish, Nepali, Filipino, Ethiopian and Arabic.<\/p>\n

Volunteers passed out pretzels and popcorn while a DJ provided a variety of music from different countries. There was also \u201ca Chill Zone\u201d in the library for community members where they could read fun international books. And there were the Tallwood dancers who performed a traditional Filipino \u201ctinikling\u201d dance and a Moroccan \u201cdabke\u201d dance. The latter drew numerous children to the dance floor determined to learn this foreign dance.<\/p>\n

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Families exploring the offerings at the Nepali club.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sophia Zitioui and Ritanna Johnson were not shy of sharing what it means to be in the Arabic club. They showed visitors how to write their names in Arabic and the art of henna, which in Muslim culture brings good luck. At the Japanese table, students were challenged with a few Japanese words such as \u201cokaasan\u201d (mom), \u201cotousan\u201d (dad), \u201cnihon\u201d (Japan) and \u201csushi\u201d (sushi).<\/p>\n

Lex Becraft and Konrad Landess came to the event with a pile of Spanish books to show what the Global Studies Academy has to offer. They are passionate about the Spanish language and they hold to be true that \u201cthe culture and language are beautiful and all around us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Japanese Honor Society<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to Greg Falls, a teacher at the Global Studies and World Language Academy at Tallwood, events like this offer Academy students numerous opportunities to showcase the culture they represent or share what they have learned in school and language classes.<\/p>\n

The event was also edifying. An African American family stood up to share a story through music and poetry. Moreover, they performed their written work about Harriet Tubman.<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, the power of storytelling and the celebration of different cultures will come back again next year at Fairfield.<\/p>\n

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Tallwood\u2019s students during the tinikling dance \u2013 a folk dance that represents the attempts of Filipino rice farmers to catch and prevent the tikling bird from stealing ripe rice grains from the fields.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Philippines<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Chinese club<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Haiti and Italy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Family performance<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

-Svetla Tomanova Fairfield Elementary welcomed students and their diverse families as well as members of the community to experience and celebrate different cultures. They called the event “Multicultural Convention.” The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":10961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10950"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10963,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950\/revisions\/10963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}