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 think the purpose of this assignment is to represent many different cultures in the class' Christmas Around the World celebration, with the goal of students learning about new and unknown cultures. I think the teacher randomly assigned cultural groups to students in order to make it fair; if not, many students would likely be "fighting" for their own culture. I am sure that the teacher would welcome you to come in and share about your countries' special holiday traditions, in addition to sending in the items that help your student learn about the German holiday traditions.