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!) I completely understand your feelings. However, consider her ultimate goal in this process. I am assuming she wants to have the students, all of the students experience cultures other than their own. Now, having said that, it would have been amazingly collaborative if she had paired your son with the student that was assigned France and/or Romania. He could have served as peer tutor! Also, perhaps your entire family could have come in to the classroom ahead of time and shared your experiences as a way to model the expectations the teacher has for the students as far as their assignments go. I do have to applaud her for her approach to such a festive time of year and the thoughtful twist she put on such an assignment.