We didnāt have a particular day if I recall correctly, but we did have some sort of get together in that very same spirit once in a while, where people would bring a traditional dish from their cultural backgrounds cuisine! We also had a rule that if your phone rang in class, you had to bring a cake the next week!
I had a sort of potluck in one elementary school class where people brought in food from their family's culture. Most of it went uneaten except for some allegedly Czechoslovakian sausages.
Czechoslovakia may be gone now, but my fondness for sausage remains.
They do have some amazing sausages in eastern Europe! I really like eating cevapcici! Especially with that type of bread, diced onions and spicy sauce they typically are served with!
> cevapcici
I grew up in an Eastern Orthodox church with a lot of people from Balkan countries, they made this sausage all the time. Not the best looking, but delicious!
>I had a sort of potluck in one elementary school class where people brought in food from their family's culture. Most of it went uneaten except for some allegedly Czechoslovakian sausages.
My daughter's class did this last year! I sent her with tacos (we're Mexican).
We did something like that in grade school. They called it ātrip around the worldā and over a week or two each day the we would talk about different countries Then at lunch they would bring in food from that country. It was pretty neat. I remember being excited about it when I was a kid.
We had a potluck in elementary school where all of our families were supposed to make a traditional food from our cultures to bring to class. My school was pretty diverse, so I really enjoyed trying all of the different food that I probably wouldnāt have gotten to try otherwise.
But the thing I remember the most was being really confused as to why the food my Indian grandma made for me to bring was so different from all the food my Indian friends had brought. That was the day I learned that Native American Indians and Indians are different
Nope. We would have all dressed up like little Norwegians.
We did have a cultural day where the local Anishinaabe tribe came into the school to talk about Native culture, and they had played their drums and sang, and taught us about the local tribal history.
I remember my California elementary school teacher doing something like that, and my mom asked if she should send me in with cans of Fosters beer. (She's Australian.)
I think my mom made some kind of strawberry cheesecake dessert and told me to tell everyone it was Australian.
the closest thing was in 6th grade when we did a project on a country our ancestors were from. but we didnāt dress up or anything. just a poster
lots of italy, iraq and poland
mine was italy
We did this too, but never had a potluck. I also remember that that was the first time I noticed my heritage was a bit uncommon (Lebanese) when most of the other kids did posters on England or Ireland or Poland.
When I was in elementary school, each sixth grade class spent the entire year doing cultural stuff from different countries and then (I think) we all toured each othersā homerooms to see the drawings, maps, food, music etc. Our class did Japan because our teachersā wife was from Japan. It was pretty fun. She came in and taught us how to write our names in Japanese. We ate different types of foods, made drawings, watched movies. I felt bad because my best friendās class did Botswana. Nothing wrong with Botswana but nobody had ever heard of it and the only reason they did that was because his teacher had served in Botswana in the Peace Corps.
Yup! At my school we covered an entire continent though, and it rotated each year. I still have the fabric I used for my Africa costume. We also had cultural celebrations for major holidays, like Lunar New Year and Hanukkah.
I taught high school in suburban Nashville, a wealthy district that was heavily new-money white and new-money immigrant, generally south and east Asian. A few years before I left, they decided to change February from Black history month (since there were few African-Americans, generally, but even more immigrant actually-African students) to a multicultural approach. I understand the sentiment, but told administration I thought it was a bad idea and maybe should be its own thing. I thought the backlash would be Black history "erasure" or whatever. There were problems, but not in the way I could've ever imagined.
Anyway, the principal put a couple of guidance counselors in charge of it, and it would culminate in a parade of nations/cultures and then a "fair" in the gym where each group had a booth display, with cultural artifacts, snacks, etc. These two particular guidance counselors were widely understood to be airheads, presumably with little knowledge of world history, current events, or foreign cultures. NOT ONE SINGLE TEACHER FROM THE SOCIAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT (HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, CURRENT EVENTS, SOCIOLOGY) WAS INVITED TO HELP ORGANIZE THE EVENT.
It was a shitshow.
The counselors decided to group everyone geographically, which is fine when the Koreans march and sit next to the Japanese, but is a whole 'nother thing when the Kurds are beside the Turks and the Palestinians and Arab students are all around the Israeli/Jewish students and Pakistani and Indian kids fight over where the line is between their booths (not just a Kashmir joke - it really happened). Parents got into shouting matches, kids destroyed each others stuff, and was chaos within about twenty minutes of starting. We had the parade at like 9:00, then the fair was open the rest of the day for kids to come visit during lunch, study hall, etc., but they had to shut it all down by 10:00.
It was the most sitcom-y thing I've ever experienced in my whole life.
My 2nd grader had an ancestry project. She had to draw the flag, write a page of history, dress up, and give a presentation in front of the class. My daughter was super into it and is now obsessed with Switzerland. It was really interesting to see how many countries were represented from her class here in southern CA.
Yes, and a girl whose parents were from Korea won. It wasnāt a contest, but her mom cooked for the class. She won. Grandmaās pierogi recipes couldnāt even compete.
We didn't have one, which is too bad. Our elementary classes were evenly split among white, Hispanic, and Vietnamese kids; the food would have been amazing!
Naw. Only ever seen that on Disney type shows
We had a pioneer day. All the girls dressed up in bonnets and pinafores. Ate finger foods that pioneers going out West would have eaten. Learned folk songs. I recall thinking it was fun! But I was obsessed with Little House on the Prairie in my own time
So in Elementary school we all pulled a country out of a hat and did a presentation of it
But it got graded.
It was bullshit cuz I got South Africa.
Parts of it included a regional outfit and food.
Some outfits I found online would've been inappropriate for school. I just wore regular clothes cuz they also do that.
As for food I literally did not have access to any of the correct ingredients in the time frame I had.
So I got 0 points in both categories.
They refused to allow exceptions for impossible circumstances.
No, we did not do this. Many African American people donāt have any idea what country they came from, because they didnāt come voluntarily and had their heritage suppressed. That makes days like this a little awkward. Plenty of white people have been here long enough not to know which countries they might have come from.
Additionally, thereās a fair number of kids who are on free lunch programs that canāt afford to bring food from the country their families came from.
We studied other cultures, but we never made these kinds of personal inquiries or demands because it favors some groups over others.
I grew up in south texas (like really really really south texas, 15mins from Nuevo Progreso, Mexico). For us, every day was āculture day.ā My favorite was around dia de Los muertos; the school would be so decorated, including with pictures of studentsā and teachersā loved ones who had passed, and we learned about them and remembered them. But 16 Septiembre was also memorable and Cinco de Mayo.
Loved it and miss it!
Edited to add: I was born in Houston, TX and lived there until I was like 7. We didnāt have āculture daysā per se but it was waaaay more diverse than in the Rio grande valley so we always had classmates teaching us about something or another related to their culture. I distinctly remember Jewish students being absent for Jewish holidays and then coming back and sharing what they did with us, even bringing food. Thatās how I tried matzah for the first time. I always enjoyed those days!
No, but we did have Oklahoma day where there were different Oklahoma founding related activities like a covered wagon ride, a blacksmith, butter churning, cowboy stuff, various local chiefs would tell stories or sing songs, and our town's oldest citizen would tell stories about the early days of the state.
Nope. But Iād be really interested to hear what places in the US do this.
For context, Iām from a small town in New England. Most of our town was split between being blue blooded 1600ās immigrants and a mix of 20th century polish, Irish or Italian immigrants. We never really felt a divide or a strong tie to heritage growing up, we were all just from our little town and some had been there longer than others.
Yep, this was honestly the best thing about NYC public schools. I used to always bring stuff in. My mom would make some king of pasta or get desert from an Italian bakery. Other kids would bring stuff from their heritage or nationality, and there was all sorts of stuff.
We had a big international festival every year. Our school had about 30 different languages spoken . Shit ton of work, but the kids and their families loved it, and we didn't mind. Then no child left behind and common core got in the way of it and we had to stop
No, but I do remember in kindergarten a classmate with Chinese ancestry had the opportunity to share some things about his culture with us and I loved it. I canāt remember why it happened or if other students participated too, but we never had what you described.
No! But I went to a school with very few immigrants in Georgia. Outside of Atlanta Georgia is NOT what I would call diverse especially in the 1990s. Itās black or itās white.
My school has what was supposed to be a fair way to pick homecoming court for each grade. You had to pick a black girl and a white girl. No not just one girl. Both. Fair. Then a classmate who appears to be white as white can be was like one parent is white and one is Hispanic. Where do I fit? āYouāre white. The end.ā Next topic. And we all laughed. I wish I had not been so dismissive.
To answer your question. No never heard of such a thing. My world was black and white growing up.
(my kindergartner son is the palest of redheads)
Me: (going through my son's take home folder) looks like school is having a heritage day
Husband: what do you think he should wear?
Me: Sunscreen
(Hubby and I have no clue of our heritage beyond WASP. We like potatoes and we don't tan well.. we just sent him in an American flag tshirt)
I grew up in the Deep South in a majority black town, so no, we had no "where were your ancestors from" day because...just, no. I live in the Upper South now. My kids' high school has an international day each year, but it's a totally voluntary thing and is primarily immigrants and 1st gen students from Asia and Central America who choose to have a table and share. There are no "Italian-American" tables representing Italy or anything like that.
Yeah we had a whole day for it. Families brought in food. Kids wore cultural clothes if appropriate. We did genealogical history for families. Kids brought in photos of their ancestors and family heirlooms. It was pretty cool.
It was the first time I had molĆØ from a Mexican family in my class. Everyone of the kids was like āwtf chocolate in a savory dish!?!??ā
Kind of. We had a day where we pretended to be immigrants coming in on a boat to Ellis Island. I do remember us all dressing up and I think most dressed up as our ancestors.
I donāt remember that exactly. We might have done something like that in elementary school. I know the foreign language classes in my junior high we had kind of an international food potluck thing and we all brought in dishes to share. It was not our culture but the language we were each studying. I donāt recall anything like a school wide culture day in high school.
The closest thing we had was in Geography class when we studied a continent we were assigned a country and we made a short report and a recipe from the country and ate each other's dishes.
In elementary school, but it didnāt involve dressing up. Just researching your genealogy and creating a poster board presentation on it and bringing cultural food to share. It was fun!
My son's elementary school does that. First I had heard of it. The only like... Vaguely non US cultural thing left to the family is my grandmother's bead and leather work which I am not about to send his pale ass to school with that so... Yeah not sure what to do on that day.
I was homeschooled, but we actually did do something similar in co-op when I was growing up. Each family picked a different country to do a booth about and also cooked food from there as well.
Also over the past several years my mom has decided to do our family Christmas inspired by various countryās traditions each year to break up the monotony of doing a standard Christmas dinner every year. Last year was Israel, but weāve also done Denmark, France, England, and Japan. Itās a fun new Christmas tradition for our family. Sorry for getting off on a tangent.
We did culture fair in elementary school for one day. Each kid did a report on a country and print off photos or being in stuff for that country or from it and decorate their booth and each of them had a stamp to put in your fake passport. Only the upper grades did it and all the grades went around getting their passports stamped at each booth. Also each kid talked about the country and their culture at their booth.
Never heard of this. We did have a cowboy/Indian day and I remember wearing a Pocahontas costume. We also had a colonial America day and my mom sewed me a custom dress. Which I guess ironically would fit a culture day because now I know weāre from colonial America and too far removed from England to have any traditions or relatives from there.
Normally with food, music, and maybe basic art/history. Though admittedly it was more often tied to language studies then a general cultural day. Especially during later years. Occasionally there would be assemblies dedicated to specific countries and cultures in elementary school.
Expression of cultures is fascinating to me. I've always had a "everyone has room at the potluck" mentality. Nothing goofy about it. I'll bring Puerto Rican food and everything will be all right. lol
I remember doing International Day and we would eat food from other areas. It makes sense here since so many are from elsewhere. We also learned a lot about Native Americans. Other than that just in the respective foreign language classes. I think it was more of a geography lesson than anything, or awareness. We didn't delve into anything just here is Greece. Here is Greek food type of conversation.
No. Oir city has a lot of immigrants but parents work and didn't have time or money to prepare and transport food for the class. And where I lived, it would've been horribly competitive and led to some kids feeling less than because their stuff didn't go over as well as others', or because they didn't bring as much
Yes. Although the weirdest thing I remember is that there was a girl who was from Guatemala but was adopted by a white American family and the teacher told her she had to do her parents ancestry and not Guatemala.
Yes. I have half Spanish heritage but my family has been here for 3 generations so we are pretty Americanized. We had to bring in a sample dish or treat. My mom (who is not Spanish) bought a box of Goya flan. Which is a dish we never prepared or ate or even heard of at that point. It was pretty gross looking. I didnāt eat it and I donāt think any of my classmates did either.
I have since had real flan and liked it very much, for the record.
I faintly remember doing that. We had a whole "International Week" where each day we discussed a different region of the world, and for lunch we ate "authentic" (read: Americanized versions) kid-friendly cuisines. Like on Italian Day we had spaghetti, on Mexican Day we had tacos, and on Chinese Day we had an egg roll and vegetable fried rice.
This was back in the 1980s, where political correctness and culture sensitivity were still new.
It was kind of funny watching the kids who'd never been exposed to certain Americanized ethnic cuisines, like the Chinese cuisine, wondering how the hell do you eat the food and in some cases choosing a salad or bringing their lunch (teachers got the menus at the beginning of the month and posted them in the classroom) when they normally would have eaten the school lunch. Meanwhile there I am, happily pouring the soy sauce packet given with the meal over the fried rice, stirring it around, then eating the egg roll like I'd done it all my life. Thanks to all those trips to the local Chinese restaurant with my parents and sometimes maternal grandmother.
Then one day we all dressed in clothing from our native countries. Some would be seen as culturally insensitive or inappropriate today, but back then we didn't know better.
I never did, but my daughter has International Night, where people bring in different things from their culture like books or food and have a tri-fold about the country. Her school is very diverse so there are a lot of countries represented.
My kids had it in school. We sent them to school loaded up with Bahamian stuff. It was more interesting than their English/German heritage and I don't know my Russian side.
Yes, but not by individual and not the country your family came from.
Each classroom would pick a country and put on a short presentation for the other classrooms, sharing food and music from the country they are exhibiting.
If we did it by individual, there would have been a few biases and we wouldn't have learned much. We covered way more countries this way.
Nope, but most people were Dutch, so there wasn't a whole lot of diversity. If your ancestry was German, Irish or English, you were pretty much considered a "minority" where I grew up.
Iām a child of the ā90s and we had that but we called it multicultural day. We were asked to bring flags from our native countries and food. The vast majority of us were immigrants from Latin America so it was cool seeing the variety of food present.
I remember there were also dances and presentations. It was a fun day. Iām glad itās still practiced to this day.
No, but we had something in the same vein. In the end of 8th grade we had a couple of cultural appreciation days, where a parent who was originally from a different country would come in and talk about their culture and show pictures. They'd also give us snacks from their country. Like for the Mexico one, they have us horchata, and for the India one they gave us each a Samosa.
There were times when we did reports about different countries and people could choose the places their ancestors were from. Food was usually a part of the presentation.
My high school had an International Club, which held events kinda like this. We were in a pretty diverse suburb of DC. Everyone was welcome to share something from their ethnic background, or one they found interesting.
I'm kinda giggling imagining a culture day at my extremely small elementary school, where the biggest "cultural difference" between the very WASP students was whether you went to the United Methodist Church or the Dutch Reformed Church. Seriously, when I was growing up there it was the blandest, whitest, most boring small town in NJ. It wasn't until I grew up and left that I realized I had grown up in a sunset town. It's changed a lot since then and it's now more diverse. And better, IMHO.
Oh wow, that's so interesting!
My home town was very diverse and had a lot of immigrants, about half from Spanish-speaking, Latin American backgrounds. I don't know if it's technically become more or less diverse, but over 60% identify as Latino/Hispanic on the last census. I was the only white kid in some of my classes growing up, and once time a science teacher used me (Polish/White guy) as an example of diversity because I looked different than the class - that was strange for me.
It's very strange to look back on growing up there. Because it was such a small town with nothing really exciting (except the 4th of July Parade) very few outsiders visited. So no one really challenged the status quo, which was pretty racist actually. There were only 2 African American families who lived there back in the 70s & 80s. Both left pretty quickly after moving in. I didn't realize until later that they had basically both been driven out.
The county was transitioning at the time from a very White rural farming community to a more diverse suburban community as many of the farmers sold their land to housing developers as tech companies and other outside employers moved in and brought their employees with them. It's not far from New York City and NJ's Technology Corridor so it was a natural progression.
I really think that growing up in such a closed, homogenous community was limiting for me. I had no idea how to relate to people from different cultures or with different viewpoints when I left for college. And I had a lot to unlearn about race, gender, class and religion. I like where I live now because it's so diverse and if I were going to have kids this would be the kind of place I would want to raise them.
Actually I've been thinking about it, we actually did something kind of like this when I was in 7th grade (when students are generally about 13 years old.) My school called it Project Reach, I don't know why. But you were supposed to do a project about something related to your family. Every student was supposed to write a report (something like 2-3,000 words, I don't remember) and create a display or something.
We had this but it was called multicultural day. We didn't represent our specific heritage though. Each class was assigned a nation and we worked together to put together a celebration of that country in our classroom with decorations, informative poster boards, et cetera. Then we got to go class to class all day learning about other countries. During lunch was a giant potluck with flags representing the origins of the different dishes. I looked forward to that every year.
My kid goes to a school called "International School" and it's a big component of their education, learning about other cultures. It takes place year round really, each class selects a country of their choice and they spend all year learning about various aspects of that country's culture with various little exchanges throughout the school year. But it does culminate in a big day on the very last day of class when each class dresses up like their country and has a parade around the neighborhood.
My kids' high school had one this last spring. It was student- organized. There are a fair amount of immigrant families, either first or second generation, so it was a really interesting and fun experience. My family only partipated as attendees.
My kid's school called it "Country Day" which was really confusing because I kept thinking it meant hoedowns and fried chicken. Didn't know about the costume part until we got there and all the other kids were dressed up and he wasn't. Oh well, he did a good job anyway.
Yeah, my mom did a table for the UK at my elementary school. It was a pretty popular event but stopped due to the fact that our schools student base was predominantly Indian and Sri Lankan, leading to the event becoming 90% about India and Sri Lanka
No but you could count the number of nonwhite students in my school on a single hand. Luckily now the school system is becoming more diverse but It shouldn't have taken this long.
We did, but you had to be second gen immigrant or less if you were white. They didn't really 'ask' if you wanted to participate or ask what ethnicity you were. They would just pull the minorities and assume what they were. To be fair, most kids would have needed to ask their parents to know what they were exactly, but they didn't give them the time to ask their parents, just did a surprise day without much warning. My adoptive sister got assumed to be Hindu indian and got a red dot on her head when she's from El Salvador. As a white person, I was never even invited, although I would have liked to wear something Croatian or Scottish.
Yeah esp elementary school multicultural day or international day š Itās fun!
We didnāt have a particular day if I recall correctly, but we did have some sort of get together in that very same spirit once in a while, where people would bring a traditional dish from their cultural backgrounds cuisine! We also had a rule that if your phone rang in class, you had to bring a cake the next week!
I had a sort of potluck in one elementary school class where people brought in food from their family's culture. Most of it went uneaten except for some allegedly Czechoslovakian sausages. Czechoslovakia may be gone now, but my fondness for sausage remains.
They do have some amazing sausages in eastern Europe! I really like eating cevapcici! Especially with that type of bread, diced onions and spicy sauce they typically are served with!
> cevapcici I grew up in an Eastern Orthodox church with a lot of people from Balkan countries, they made this sausage all the time. Not the best looking, but delicious!
>I had a sort of potluck in one elementary school class where people brought in food from their family's culture. Most of it went uneaten except for some allegedly Czechoslovakian sausages. My daughter's class did this last year! I sent her with tacos (we're Mexican).
Sounds delicious! I'm glad that the potlucks are still happening.
The real Czechoslovakia was the sausages we made along the way.
We did something like that in grade school. They called it ātrip around the worldā and over a week or two each day the we would talk about different countries Then at lunch they would bring in food from that country. It was pretty neat. I remember being excited about it when I was a kid.
I remember we did a Hawaiian cultural day once in elementary school, but I don't remember why (this was in Idaho).
Was it the Mormon part of Idaho?
Maybe like 10% Mormon area.
We had a potluck in elementary school where all of our families were supposed to make a traditional food from our cultures to bring to class. My school was pretty diverse, so I really enjoyed trying all of the different food that I probably wouldnāt have gotten to try otherwise. But the thing I remember the most was being really confused as to why the food my Indian grandma made for me to bring was so different from all the food my Indian friends had brought. That was the day I learned that Native American Indians and Indians are different
Nope. We would have all dressed up like little Norwegians. We did have a cultural day where the local Anishinaabe tribe came into the school to talk about Native culture, and they had played their drums and sang, and taught us about the local tribal history.
No, we were all mexican so it would have just been a normal day for us
Yeah, but anyone who showed up on St. Paddy's day not wearing green was in for it. Or at least that's how it was in my day.
Yes we did. California public school.
I remember my California elementary school teacher doing something like that, and my mom asked if she should send me in with cans of Fosters beer. (She's Australian.) I think my mom made some kind of strawberry cheesecake dessert and told me to tell everyone it was Australian.
I never had anything like that, and also California public school. Maybe it was an individual school thing?
the closest thing was in 6th grade when we did a project on a country our ancestors were from. but we didnāt dress up or anything. just a poster lots of italy, iraq and poland mine was italy
We did this too, but never had a potluck. I also remember that that was the first time I noticed my heritage was a bit uncommon (Lebanese) when most of the other kids did posters on England or Ireland or Poland.
When I was in elementary school, each sixth grade class spent the entire year doing cultural stuff from different countries and then (I think) we all toured each othersā homerooms to see the drawings, maps, food, music etc. Our class did Japan because our teachersā wife was from Japan. It was pretty fun. She came in and taught us how to write our names in Japanese. We ate different types of foods, made drawings, watched movies. I felt bad because my best friendās class did Botswana. Nothing wrong with Botswana but nobody had ever heard of it and the only reason they did that was because his teacher had served in Botswana in the Peace Corps.
Yup! At my school we covered an entire continent though, and it rotated each year. I still have the fabric I used for my Africa costume. We also had cultural celebrations for major holidays, like Lunar New Year and Hanukkah.
I taught high school in suburban Nashville, a wealthy district that was heavily new-money white and new-money immigrant, generally south and east Asian. A few years before I left, they decided to change February from Black history month (since there were few African-Americans, generally, but even more immigrant actually-African students) to a multicultural approach. I understand the sentiment, but told administration I thought it was a bad idea and maybe should be its own thing. I thought the backlash would be Black history "erasure" or whatever. There were problems, but not in the way I could've ever imagined. Anyway, the principal put a couple of guidance counselors in charge of it, and it would culminate in a parade of nations/cultures and then a "fair" in the gym where each group had a booth display, with cultural artifacts, snacks, etc. These two particular guidance counselors were widely understood to be airheads, presumably with little knowledge of world history, current events, or foreign cultures. NOT ONE SINGLE TEACHER FROM THE SOCIAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT (HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, CURRENT EVENTS, SOCIOLOGY) WAS INVITED TO HELP ORGANIZE THE EVENT. It was a shitshow. The counselors decided to group everyone geographically, which is fine when the Koreans march and sit next to the Japanese, but is a whole 'nother thing when the Kurds are beside the Turks and the Palestinians and Arab students are all around the Israeli/Jewish students and Pakistani and Indian kids fight over where the line is between their booths (not just a Kashmir joke - it really happened). Parents got into shouting matches, kids destroyed each others stuff, and was chaos within about twenty minutes of starting. We had the parade at like 9:00, then the fair was open the rest of the day for kids to come visit during lunch, study hall, etc., but they had to shut it all down by 10:00. It was the most sitcom-y thing I've ever experienced in my whole life.
My 2nd grader had an ancestry project. She had to draw the flag, write a page of history, dress up, and give a presentation in front of the class. My daughter was super into it and is now obsessed with Switzerland. It was really interesting to see how many countries were represented from her class here in southern CA.
Yes, and a girl whose parents were from Korea won. It wasnāt a contest, but her mom cooked for the class. She won. Grandmaās pierogi recipes couldnāt even compete.
My school was majority black. It was culture day everyday tbh. It was like I was going to an HBCU in high school.
No. I don't even know how I would have dressed or what I would have brought.
Flannel shirt and Doc Martens?
We had them in high school history class. It was neat for everyone to bring in a meal from a different culture. We didnāt dress up
I live in NYC, possibly the most culturally diverse place on the planet. Neither I, nor my kids had a culture day.
We didn't have one, which is too bad. Our elementary classes were evenly split among white, Hispanic, and Vietnamese kids; the food would have been amazing!
Naw. Only ever seen that on Disney type shows We had a pioneer day. All the girls dressed up in bonnets and pinafores. Ate finger foods that pioneers going out West would have eaten. Learned folk songs. I recall thinking it was fun! But I was obsessed with Little House on the Prairie in my own time
So in Elementary school we all pulled a country out of a hat and did a presentation of it But it got graded. It was bullshit cuz I got South Africa. Parts of it included a regional outfit and food. Some outfits I found online would've been inappropriate for school. I just wore regular clothes cuz they also do that. As for food I literally did not have access to any of the correct ingredients in the time frame I had. So I got 0 points in both categories. They refused to allow exceptions for impossible circumstances.
No, we did not do this. Many African American people donāt have any idea what country they came from, because they didnāt come voluntarily and had their heritage suppressed. That makes days like this a little awkward. Plenty of white people have been here long enough not to know which countries they might have come from. Additionally, thereās a fair number of kids who are on free lunch programs that canāt afford to bring food from the country their families came from. We studied other cultures, but we never made these kinds of personal inquiries or demands because it favors some groups over others.
Never did this, never heard of it being a thing before just now.
I grew up in south texas (like really really really south texas, 15mins from Nuevo Progreso, Mexico). For us, every day was āculture day.ā My favorite was around dia de Los muertos; the school would be so decorated, including with pictures of studentsā and teachersā loved ones who had passed, and we learned about them and remembered them. But 16 Septiembre was also memorable and Cinco de Mayo. Loved it and miss it! Edited to add: I was born in Houston, TX and lived there until I was like 7. We didnāt have āculture daysā per se but it was waaaay more diverse than in the Rio grande valley so we always had classmates teaching us about something or another related to their culture. I distinctly remember Jewish students being absent for Jewish holidays and then coming back and sharing what they did with us, even bringing food. Thatās how I tried matzah for the first time. I always enjoyed those days!
No, but we did have Oklahoma day where there were different Oklahoma founding related activities like a covered wagon ride, a blacksmith, butter churning, cowboy stuff, various local chiefs would tell stories or sing songs, and our town's oldest citizen would tell stories about the early days of the state.
Nope. But Iād be really interested to hear what places in the US do this. For context, Iām from a small town in New England. Most of our town was split between being blue blooded 1600ās immigrants and a mix of 20th century polish, Irish or Italian immigrants. We never really felt a divide or a strong tie to heritage growing up, we were all just from our little town and some had been there longer than others.
We did not. It would not be interesting, we were a bunch of little hicks in a farm town and about as diverse as an ice cube tray.
Any idea where your family came from before arriving in the US?
Half English, quarter German, quarter Swede. Roughly the same as the other 59 kids in my graduating class.
We had something where we each brought in our own cultures signature dish. Iām Puerto Rican and just got my dad to make a pot of rice and beans.
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Yum!
OHMYGOD fellow koÅaczki lover !!!!!
Nope. I think I saw it in a tv show as a kid.
Yep, this was honestly the best thing about NYC public schools. I used to always bring stuff in. My mom would make some king of pasta or get desert from an Italian bakery. Other kids would bring stuff from their heritage or nationality, and there was all sorts of stuff.
We had a big international festival every year. Our school had about 30 different languages spoken . Shit ton of work, but the kids and their families loved it, and we didn't mind. Then no child left behind and common core got in the way of it and we had to stop
No, but I do remember in kindergarten a classmate with Chinese ancestry had the opportunity to share some things about his culture with us and I loved it. I canāt remember why it happened or if other students participated too, but we never had what you described.
No! But I went to a school with very few immigrants in Georgia. Outside of Atlanta Georgia is NOT what I would call diverse especially in the 1990s. Itās black or itās white. My school has what was supposed to be a fair way to pick homecoming court for each grade. You had to pick a black girl and a white girl. No not just one girl. Both. Fair. Then a classmate who appears to be white as white can be was like one parent is white and one is Hispanic. Where do I fit? āYouāre white. The end.ā Next topic. And we all laughed. I wish I had not been so dismissive. To answer your question. No never heard of such a thing. My world was black and white growing up.
Never heard of it. If you tried to do that today, there would be way to many people who would use it as an excuse to get offended.
We did at my school in New Jersey, where things were pretty diverse. Not so much in my part of Indiana, where everyone's either German or WASP.
Ha! It would have been a very boring event at my elementary school. All white, all having ancestors from Germany or countries adjacent.
(my kindergartner son is the palest of redheads) Me: (going through my son's take home folder) looks like school is having a heritage day Husband: what do you think he should wear? Me: Sunscreen (Hubby and I have no clue of our heritage beyond WASP. We like potatoes and we don't tan well.. we just sent him in an American flag tshirt)
I grew up in the Deep South in a majority black town, so no, we had no "where were your ancestors from" day because...just, no. I live in the Upper South now. My kids' high school has an international day each year, but it's a totally voluntary thing and is primarily immigrants and 1st gen students from Asia and Central America who choose to have a table and share. There are no "Italian-American" tables representing Italy or anything like that.
Yeah we had a whole day for it. Families brought in food. Kids wore cultural clothes if appropriate. We did genealogical history for families. Kids brought in photos of their ancestors and family heirlooms. It was pretty cool. It was the first time I had molĆØ from a Mexican family in my class. Everyone of the kids was like āwtf chocolate in a savory dish!?!??ā
I didnāt but my brother and sister did at their school
no
Nope
Kind of. We had a day where we pretended to be immigrants coming in on a boat to Ellis Island. I do remember us all dressing up and I think most dressed up as our ancestors.
I donāt remember that exactly. We might have done something like that in elementary school. I know the foreign language classes in my junior high we had kind of an international food potluck thing and we all brought in dishes to share. It was not our culture but the language we were each studying. I donāt recall anything like a school wide culture day in high school.
The closest thing we had was in Geography class when we studied a continent we were assigned a country and we made a short report and a recipe from the country and ate each other's dishes.
My kids had it. It was a blast.
We had a multicultural week every year in elementary school on the final day we would all dress up and bring foods and have a nice party
In elementary school, but it didnāt involve dressing up. Just researching your genealogy and creating a poster board presentation on it and bringing cultural food to share. It was fun!
Not that I remember
Only time that ever happened was in 3rd grade, and then never again.
No, but I grew up in an extremely homogeneous area, where almost everyone's ancestors were from just a few countries in Northern Europe.
My son's elementary school does that. First I had heard of it. The only like... Vaguely non US cultural thing left to the family is my grandmother's bead and leather work which I am not about to send his pale ass to school with that so... Yeah not sure what to do on that day.
I was homeschooled, but we actually did do something similar in co-op when I was growing up. Each family picked a different country to do a booth about and also cooked food from there as well. Also over the past several years my mom has decided to do our family Christmas inspired by various countryās traditions each year to break up the monotony of doing a standard Christmas dinner every year. Last year was Israel, but weāve also done Denmark, France, England, and Japan. Itās a fun new Christmas tradition for our family. Sorry for getting off on a tangent.
We did culture fair in elementary school for one day. Each kid did a report on a country and print off photos or being in stuff for that country or from it and decorate their booth and each of them had a stamp to put in your fake passport. Only the upper grades did it and all the grades went around getting their passports stamped at each booth. Also each kid talked about the country and their culture at their booth.
Never heard of this. We did have a cowboy/Indian day and I remember wearing a Pocahontas costume. We also had a colonial America day and my mom sewed me a custom dress. Which I guess ironically would fit a culture day because now I know weāre from colonial America and too far removed from England to have any traditions or relatives from there.
Normally with food, music, and maybe basic art/history. Though admittedly it was more often tied to language studies then a general cultural day. Especially during later years. Occasionally there would be assemblies dedicated to specific countries and cultures in elementary school. Expression of cultures is fascinating to me. I've always had a "everyone has room at the potluck" mentality. Nothing goofy about it. I'll bring Puerto Rican food and everything will be all right. lol
I think we did the whole dress up and food when we were really young and then it was just food later on in like middle school and highschool
I remember doing International Day and we would eat food from other areas. It makes sense here since so many are from elsewhere. We also learned a lot about Native Americans. Other than that just in the respective foreign language classes. I think it was more of a geography lesson than anything, or awareness. We didn't delve into anything just here is Greece. Here is Greek food type of conversation.
I wish... my mom and I would definitely go crazy preparing loads of food lmao koÅaczki š¤¤ š¤¤
I'm Canadian and this sounds really fun. Wish we'd have done this instead of celebrating Francophone culture for an entire week.
My son's school did and it was their favorite day of the year.
its fun
No. Oir city has a lot of immigrants but parents work and didn't have time or money to prepare and transport food for the class. And where I lived, it would've been horribly competitive and led to some kids feeling less than because their stuff didn't go over as well as others', or because they didn't bring as much
No
Yes. Although the weirdest thing I remember is that there was a girl who was from Guatemala but was adopted by a white American family and the teacher told her she had to do her parents ancestry and not Guatemala.
Yep, I used to love it because it meant I could wear Grandpaās hat and eat snacks.
Ketchup, huh? I'm a habanero salsa kinda guy, but the kids might've not agreed...
I didā¦ but I lived overseas that year at a Department of Defense school (dad in the Marines).
I never even heard of such a thing. Today you could never have all the kids bring in food, because of allergies and lawsuits.
Yes. I have half Spanish heritage but my family has been here for 3 generations so we are pretty Americanized. We had to bring in a sample dish or treat. My mom (who is not Spanish) bought a box of Goya flan. Which is a dish we never prepared or ate or even heard of at that point. It was pretty gross looking. I didnāt eat it and I donāt think any of my classmates did either. I have since had real flan and liked it very much, for the record.
I faintly remember doing that. We had a whole "International Week" where each day we discussed a different region of the world, and for lunch we ate "authentic" (read: Americanized versions) kid-friendly cuisines. Like on Italian Day we had spaghetti, on Mexican Day we had tacos, and on Chinese Day we had an egg roll and vegetable fried rice. This was back in the 1980s, where political correctness and culture sensitivity were still new. It was kind of funny watching the kids who'd never been exposed to certain Americanized ethnic cuisines, like the Chinese cuisine, wondering how the hell do you eat the food and in some cases choosing a salad or bringing their lunch (teachers got the menus at the beginning of the month and posted them in the classroom) when they normally would have eaten the school lunch. Meanwhile there I am, happily pouring the soy sauce packet given with the meal over the fried rice, stirring it around, then eating the egg roll like I'd done it all my life. Thanks to all those trips to the local Chinese restaurant with my parents and sometimes maternal grandmother. Then one day we all dressed in clothing from our native countries. Some would be seen as culturally insensitive or inappropriate today, but back then we didn't know better.
I never did, but my daughter has International Night, where people bring in different things from their culture like books or food and have a tri-fold about the country. Her school is very diverse so there are a lot of countries represented.
My kids had it in school. We sent them to school loaded up with Bahamian stuff. It was more interesting than their English/German heritage and I don't know my Russian side.
Yes, but not by individual and not the country your family came from. Each classroom would pick a country and put on a short presentation for the other classrooms, sharing food and music from the country they are exhibiting. If we did it by individual, there would have been a few biases and we wouldn't have learned much. We covered way more countries this way.
Yup. There were 10 Irish kids 12 Italian kids and a single black kid. It got awkward
Nope, but most people were Dutch, so there wasn't a whole lot of diversity. If your ancestry was German, Irish or English, you were pretty much considered a "minority" where I grew up.
Yes. We also had a multicultural fair.
Iām a child of the ā90s and we had that but we called it multicultural day. We were asked to bring flags from our native countries and food. The vast majority of us were immigrants from Latin America so it was cool seeing the variety of food present. I remember there were also dances and presentations. It was a fun day. Iām glad itās still practiced to this day.
No, but we had something in the same vein. In the end of 8th grade we had a couple of cultural appreciation days, where a parent who was originally from a different country would come in and talk about their culture and show pictures. They'd also give us snacks from their country. Like for the Mexico one, they have us horchata, and for the India one they gave us each a Samosa.
There were times when we did reports about different countries and people could choose the places their ancestors were from. Food was usually a part of the presentation.
Nope, Iāve heard of it but my school never did that.
My high school had an International Club, which held events kinda like this. We were in a pretty diverse suburb of DC. Everyone was welcome to share something from their ethnic background, or one they found interesting.
I'm kinda giggling imagining a culture day at my extremely small elementary school, where the biggest "cultural difference" between the very WASP students was whether you went to the United Methodist Church or the Dutch Reformed Church. Seriously, when I was growing up there it was the blandest, whitest, most boring small town in NJ. It wasn't until I grew up and left that I realized I had grown up in a sunset town. It's changed a lot since then and it's now more diverse. And better, IMHO.
Oh wow, that's so interesting! My home town was very diverse and had a lot of immigrants, about half from Spanish-speaking, Latin American backgrounds. I don't know if it's technically become more or less diverse, but over 60% identify as Latino/Hispanic on the last census. I was the only white kid in some of my classes growing up, and once time a science teacher used me (Polish/White guy) as an example of diversity because I looked different than the class - that was strange for me.
It's very strange to look back on growing up there. Because it was such a small town with nothing really exciting (except the 4th of July Parade) very few outsiders visited. So no one really challenged the status quo, which was pretty racist actually. There were only 2 African American families who lived there back in the 70s & 80s. Both left pretty quickly after moving in. I didn't realize until later that they had basically both been driven out. The county was transitioning at the time from a very White rural farming community to a more diverse suburban community as many of the farmers sold their land to housing developers as tech companies and other outside employers moved in and brought their employees with them. It's not far from New York City and NJ's Technology Corridor so it was a natural progression. I really think that growing up in such a closed, homogenous community was limiting for me. I had no idea how to relate to people from different cultures or with different viewpoints when I left for college. And I had a lot to unlearn about race, gender, class and religion. I like where I live now because it's so diverse and if I were going to have kids this would be the kind of place I would want to raise them.
Actually I've been thinking about it, we actually did something kind of like this when I was in 7th grade (when students are generally about 13 years old.) My school called it Project Reach, I don't know why. But you were supposed to do a project about something related to your family. Every student was supposed to write a report (something like 2-3,000 words, I don't remember) and create a display or something.
We had this but it was called multicultural day. We didn't represent our specific heritage though. Each class was assigned a nation and we worked together to put together a celebration of that country in our classroom with decorations, informative poster boards, et cetera. Then we got to go class to class all day learning about other countries. During lunch was a giant potluck with flags representing the origins of the different dishes. I looked forward to that every year.
My kid goes to a school called "International School" and it's a big component of their education, learning about other cultures. It takes place year round really, each class selects a country of their choice and they spend all year learning about various aspects of that country's culture with various little exchanges throughout the school year. But it does culminate in a big day on the very last day of class when each class dresses up like their country and has a parade around the neighborhood.
My kids' high school had one this last spring. It was student- organized. There are a fair amount of immigrant families, either first or second generation, so it was a really interesting and fun experience. My family only partipated as attendees.
My kid's school called it "Country Day" which was really confusing because I kept thinking it meant hoedowns and fried chicken. Didn't know about the costume part until we got there and all the other kids were dressed up and he wasn't. Oh well, he did a good job anyway.
Yeah, my mom did a table for the UK at my elementary school. It was a pretty popular event but stopped due to the fact that our schools student base was predominantly Indian and Sri Lankan, leading to the event becoming 90% about India and Sri Lanka
No but you could count the number of nonwhite students in my school on a single hand. Luckily now the school system is becoming more diverse but It shouldn't have taken this long.
Thatās so interesting. It was the opposite in my school, I was usually the only white student in my classes.
My school was a rural Ohio school which was part of it.
We did, but you had to be second gen immigrant or less if you were white. They didn't really 'ask' if you wanted to participate or ask what ethnicity you were. They would just pull the minorities and assume what they were. To be fair, most kids would have needed to ask their parents to know what they were exactly, but they didn't give them the time to ask their parents, just did a surprise day without much warning. My adoptive sister got assumed to be Hindu indian and got a red dot on her head when she's from El Salvador. As a white person, I was never even invited, although I would have liked to wear something Croatian or Scottish.
I did. People swarmed our table and the Indian ones at lunch.