Well I finished writing my story for our convergence project. Here it is:
Bergman Elementary School teacher celebrates diversity by teaching international holidays
by Tim Schrag
Starting on Dec. 12 Anglea Blankenau’s kindergarten will be going on a nine-day journey around the world to learn about winter traditions. Her students will be given boarding passes, passports and luggage sets to learn about Las Posadas in Mexico, the history of the Christmas tree in Germany, New years in Japan, the English tradition of ornaments in the United Kingdom, St. Lucia Day in Sweden, Ramadan in Egypt in addition to the holidays of Hanukkah and Kwanza.
Mrs. Blankenau’s and her students will not actually be jet setting away from Frank V. Bergman Elementary to learn about holiday traditions first-hand. The boarding passes, passports and luggage are made of construction paper. The journey is metaphoric. Instead Mrs. Blankenau and her students will use their individual connections connections to these countries to do the teaching.
Though her students will not be going abroad, several already have. Jacob Bradley’s parents were stationed in Germany, Cristofer Gallegos is from Mexico, Jameela El Sotouhy’s parents are graduate students at K-State, Jameela and her family spend their summers there and Soren Peterson’s mother is from Japan over Thanksgiving break they went there to celebrate his fifth year of life as is customary in their culture.
“When it’s nighttime in Kansas than Japan would be daytime so it’s different,” Soren said. He enjoys telling his friends about Japan and can even speak the language.
“I know lots of words, but I need help with some of them because I don’t know all of them,” he said.
Blankenau is a certified English Language Learners educator. Of her 15 students five know a language other than English, four have an international connection.
Cristofer Gallegos, Jacob Bradley, Jameela El-Sotouhy and Soren Peterson are all bilingual students in Angela Blankenau's kindergarten classroom.
“I’ve spent quite a bit of my young adult and adult life living in different countries and so I know what it’s like to be a minority and I know what it’s like to not be in a culture that is same as everyone else,” She said. “I grew up in rural Nebraska and so I just think it’s important.”
Blankenau in cooperation with several of her students’ parents is preparing to teach her class about various traditions of this season. Blankenau, who has been teaching for 23 years, said she has taught this very learning unit for at least 10 years.
“I make it fit the kids I have in my classroom, last year I had a little boy from China, so we included China,” Blankenau said. “I just choose six countries that we go visit and we see how they celebrate their holiday around the world.”
Each day the class will spend several hours of their class time making a craft, learning about each country’s flag, locating it on a globe and then exploring the food and traditions behind these winter holidays.
Hikaru Peterson, Soren’s mother, said though she is still preparing to present about Japanese traditions, but she is excited.
“I can’t tell you how it will go on Monday, but I’ve had the opportunity to go to abeilene middle school and talk about japan for an hour,” she said. “I think I did actually pretty well talking to 6-8th graders, and after having Soren, I think I can tailor it to something they will be interested in.”
Peterson plans to teach the children about upcoming Year of the Dragon and show them the parallels and similarities of Japanese and American culture. Peterson said she believes it is important for her children to know about and appreciate their heritage, but also to have an appreciation and understanding of others.
“I think whatever he is exposed would help him appreciate about his friends and his family tradition, I promote my Japanese heritage and my husband’s norwegn heritage.”
Peterson also said she really enjoys the environment Soren is exposed to by being in an English Language Learners classroom.
“It’s helpful,” she said. “There are times when I question the value of trying to pass on my heritage it is challenging, but at the same time when he’s in a classroom where they affirm his diverse background it can only be helpful and I think it can be positive for this classmates too.”
The parents are not the only ones excited for this learning unit, 5-year-old Jameela El-Sotouhy said her family has been preparing to teach her classmates about Ramadan for a while.
“Even my brothers help me and my dad,” Jameela said.
Despite Bergman Elementary being a public school, Blankenau said she has had no problems teaching about holiday traditions.
“It’s not a problem as long as you’re not saying ‘this is what you should believe,’” she said. “Our kids are from all over and it’s kind of neat that we have in the middle of Kansas and the middle of the United States we have all of these different cultures.”
Tim Schrag 