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!) Honestly, my first reaction would probably be anger. However, I would not react during the time of my anger, I would allow myself time to cool off because we never know the exact reasoning behind things. Maybe the teacher was honestly not aware of the deep French and Romanian roots, or maybe she was and was trying to open your son's eyes to a new cultural food. Although it would be great for your son to represent his heritage in the classroom, I think it would serve as a bigger learning experience (as far as being culturally diverse) for him to bring food representing a culture different from his own. He would have to do some research and dig deeper into a culture he wasn't used to.