Tonight, we had a Spring open house at my school. This year we did something different. It was decided that we would have a Festival of Nations at our school. Each classroom studied a country and created a display about their country. Families were given a passport and got a sticker for their passport from each teacher as they toured the world.
Great idea, right? I loved the idea until we were told the continent that we had to choose from. Each floor was given a continent. Now, I do understand wanting to organize it this way. However, it really stopped some of us who have a connection to a certain country from being able to use our fountains of knowledge.
I really wanted to have my class study Spain. I lived there during college for a study abroad program and met my husband while I was there. I still have a very strong connection with this country because my husband is a Spaniard and his whole family still lives there. I would have been able to do a lot of really good things with my classroom as well as giving them great Spanish food.
However, my floor was assigned the continent of Asia. So, I did the next best thing. I connected to a student’s culture. We studied Laos because one of my students is Hmong and her family comes from that country. We learned a lot. We researched, we read about Laos, we watched videos about this beautiful country. And we worked to create a great display. I loved the connection that we made to my student’s family. She brought egg rolls and flower cookies to share with us and I loved giving her a spotlight.
Our display consisted of research writing with pictures included, small strips of fabric designs using some common patterns in Hmong embroidery, and our own versions of Hmong story cloth.
I was proud of what we had done, but I spent all night feeling inadequate. My colleague, who is a resource teacher and therefore does not have a class to plan for, takes all of these things and runs with them. She treats it sort of like a competition. She worked with the classroom next door and found all kinds of projects for them to do about China. She took the ideas and made it into a wonderland of projects and showed us all up. (There was a lot of time spent on these things that I believe was time that had other purposes in her schedule) That class would have learned just as much about the country without all the glitter. They would have enjoyed the study with just one or two projects rather than dragons, lanterns, the great wall in cardboard boxes and clay, brochures, food sampling with chopsticks, and mooncakes. I don’t think this teacher means to make the rest of us look less capable, but it sure feels like this is the purpose of the over-the-top projects.
I wish I could have enjoyed this night to its fullest without the competition. Why compete? Why try to do better than the next class? Why not focus on learning?
I will go to school tomorrow and congratulate my students on their hard work learning about Laos. I hope that they will understand that we did the best we could and that is amazing. I will try to let go of this feeling of frustration at the focus on competition that should not have been there.
Been there! Doing what is best for kids and doing what was best for the “display” are different things. You focused on what the kids needed to get out of it and that’s all that matters!
Your post caught my eye because I, too, wrote about how competition can work against collaborative efforts. You did your best and supported your students as they did their best. They learned about another place in the world and celebrated a classmate. They will remember these lessons because of the connections you helped them make.
I agree with Reese. Who did the competition benefit? The teacher or the students? It sounds like the teacher…Boo! I hate competitiveness. It really takes away from the students.