Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Christmas around the world. My son goes to second grade. The first week of December my son's teacher started a short unit on Christmas around the world. As part of this unit, she asked each child to bring some type of food from a country for a Christmas celebration at school. She assigned the countries to the children and sent notes to children's homes in their communication folders. As a parent I do not have a problem with any of this. Here is what is puzzling to me. I immigrated to the US about 15 years ago from France. My wife is from Romania. My son was born in the US but he has strong French and Romanian cultural roots. I believe his teacher knows about my son's cultural background. However, my son was assigned to bring German food for the Christmas celebration. As a parent, I cannot understand why he was not assigned to bring French or Romanian food. What could be the teacher's reasoning? Should I be upset about this? Wouldn't it be better for my son to represent a part of his heritage in the classroom? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) While I do agree that the purpose of the assignment was for students to learn about different cultures, I do think that the teacher should have the students bring in food that represents their heritage. The students can be proud of the food they bring in and talk about the recipe (ex: when they eat it, who cooks it, etc) I think that the student would learn the most from this assignment if the student were able to talk about their own country and learn about others. For example, the teacher could ask the students to pick three other dishes and talk about them (ex: where they are from, what the food is, why it is special). I think this would be more meaningful to the students. Also, the other students could learn more about each other, creating a sense of a community within the classroom. I like the idea of the Christmas Around the World and I do not think that you should be upset about this. The teacher had a different idea about how the assignment should be handled. I would communicate with the teacher if a real issue occurred.