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!) Unfortunately, I think the teacher is not knowledgeable about the students in her own classroom or the teacher is ignoring the information that she has learned about the students' backgrounds. The idea about Christmas around the world is a great opportunity to have children learn about the various cultures of different people around the world. However, these learning experiences are not properly implemented when students from specific countries are not utilized in the appropriate manner. I would suggest that you contact the teacher to let her know your concerns. Communicating with the teacher is a great solution to solve problems that occur during the learning experiences of the classroom. I am sure that the teacher would have no problems with the student wanting to share his French/Romanian culture with the other students. I hope you do not hold this mistake against the educator. In addition, the family being upset at the individual will not make the situation any better.