International festival

Stephanie's elementary school usually has a late spring festival after school in May - it's the school's big fund-raiser. We've written in earlier blog entries about the work slowdown in Stephanie's school district - as the teachers have worked without a collectively bargained contract for a whole school year now - which involves teachers declining to "volunteer" for unpaid responsibilities after school hours - this would include the spring festival. Instead, the teachers and principal decided to do a festival during school hours - just for the kids and parent volunteers - not involving other family members and the whole neighborhood, as with the after-school festival. Stephanie was one of three people on the planning committee that basically turned the school into a giant centers circuit/festival booth circuit - with each classroom representing one of the countries where Stephanie and her English as a new language education colleague's kids are from plus some additional countries. Stephanie helped plan the International Festival, but her classroom - not a regular classroom - didn't actual get on the circuit. But the fair started Wednesday morning (two days before the last day of school for students) with a parade of nations and PowerPoint presentations on each country- in the gym - and Stephanie helped run those PowerPoints and guide parade participants. Then her and the other kids circled through the classrooms - where they engaged in activities like a chop stick race (see who could pick up a piece of cotton with a pair of chop sticks and move the cotton from one bowl to another (two teams - two lines of kids doing this), in the "Japan" room. I visited towards the end of the day, and Stephanie wanted me to take a picture of her Mongolian student at this, but he was way too fast for me to get his picture (it seems he's used chop sticks before). In the Caribbean room (I think this was cheating, even if it did technically cover Cuba - I don't think any of the current students are from the Caribbean), students tried doing the limbo dance (under the stick). Elsewhere, they flipped crepes (in France) (many of the crepes in the first crepe picture hit the ground, but thankfully they had a whole nother batch for kids to eat), and made people into mummies (in Egypt) (among other things). I also visited the gym and caught some of the displays/parade pieces. This engaged ENL and non-ENL students alike in the international themes of Stephanie's programs (Scholar, the school dog, even got involved, after first hesitating when he saw me), raised more money than the after-school festival (students brought in $3 each for the festival), and made the office staff happy as there were no behavior problems until the end of the day, after the festival was over. Perhaps next year - if the contract is resolved - the school and PTA will run the afterschool festival in the fall and another international festival in the spring.