Celebrations Discovery Lab

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Hello there friend how are you doing? As we are into the month of December, I cannot believe that we’re already like halfway through um but we’ve finally gotten to the end of this year.

And we’re just holding on for dear life. I don’t know about you, but that’s where I’m at. I’m holding on for dear life at this point. So if that’s you, I’m right there with you. We’ve just got a few more days to go. So this week, I want to share an idea with you that we can use in our classrooms during the celebration period of time. right now, or perhaps it’s in the spring when you have other celebrations going on. This is an idea that my good friend Barb Sandstrom, who is an Arts Integration Certification Program alum, has written about with IAS in the past, but I wanted to bring it front and center because I’ve actually been thinking about the holidays quite a lot in our classrooms, particularly now.

Because it looks so different. And there are so much more that we are aware of this year than maybe we’ve ever been aware of before. Things that are front and center in our minds. For example, our classrooms all look different. And we’ve had a really stressful year. And we know that right now, this season of time, many cultures are offering celebrations and having fun. winter traditions. And so how do we honor those while at the same time trying to get our teaching done? Do we honor those? These are some big questions, right? And put on top of that, the whole complexity of how we’re seeing our students, when we’re seeing our students, and the social emotional learning aspect to this, right? We know that celebrations are extremely important for our well-being, but how do we do that in a meaningful way? And let’s add one more layer on there.

This year, more than I think we’ve ever really seen it, we are becoming more and more aware of the cultural diversity and responsiveness that is required as we move forward with our students. There is absolutely… No going back at this point. And I don’t think we should be going back. I love where we’re going, that we’re becoming more aware of all of the cultures that exist within our classrooms and the work that is required to become anti-racist. And so when we think about that lens, along with everything else during a celebration period, it gives us a lot to work through.
And so, and I don’t know about you, but I’m going to come at this from my limited understanding as a white woman who celebrates Christmas and has, you know, that quote unquote traditional understanding of things. I know that I need to learn and I know that this is going to be uncomfortable. And so, I want to do that learning with others and I am committed to that work and I hope that you are as well. But I preface it with that because I want us all to understand where I’m coming from and I’m really hopeful to learn from all of you as well. I loved learning about different cultures from my students. I love learning about different, you know, traditions from my friends who don’t look like me and who don’t celebrate the
do the same things as me. So that is the topic of this episode. It’s not going to be, I don’t want you to think that this is like really heavy. It’s not a heavy episode. What it is, is a way for us to explore this in a way that honors the uncomfortableness, but at the same time helps us all to move forward together. That’s what I’m excited about for today.

So let’s talk about this idea called the Celebration Discovery Lab. All right. So like I shared, the Celebration Discovery Lab comes from my friend Barb Sandstrom. I love her work and what she has thought about. Barb has really done it all. She’s been a teacher. She’s been a principal. She’s been a superintendent. And Barb is from South Dakota. I’m going to say it’s I believe it is South Dakota where, you know, traditions are may look a little different than in other places in the country or in the world. And so I love this idea from her because it was prompted by her looking at all of her students and being uncomfortable with the idea of a holiday party. So if you scroll any kind of social media and you’re in any kind of a teacher group, it’s really interesting to watch what people are sharing right now. Like what are your students making for Christmas presents for their parents. I literally just saw that five seconds ago when I was scrolling my Facebook feed. That was in a fourth grade teacher group. In another administrator group, somebody was talking about being the elf on the shelf, dressing as the elf on the shelf for all the students in the school. So this is alive and well, this idea of a using them in our schools, right? And so Barb was thinking about this and trying to think about new ways that she could honor the holidays, but also the variety of cultures and celebrations and traditions that happen around the world without isolating any of her students, right? She also, and I get this because I remember this very clearly, she also felt really uncomfortable when she would have a holiday party with her students and some of the students needed to leave. And I don’t know if you’ve had that experience, but I certainly have. I remember very clearly that one of the elementary schools that I taught in celebrated Halloween, like they had a Halloween parade that the students would do around the building. And the students who were Jehovah Witnesses had a fall harvest party in the cafeteria where they made some crafts, but they couldn’t participate with the rest of the school.

So they had to leave. And the same thing happened during the gingerbread house making celebrations for Christmas that happened that week. Right. And it was always uncomfortable for me to watch students leave so that they could have their own mini celebration. But it really wasn’t celebrating anything for them. It was just literally giving them something to do so that they didn’t feel left out. But at the same time, they are left out. Right. So Barb was struggling with that as well. And so she wanted to create an environment where everybody has an opportunity to participate and that helps everybody learn and celebrate the traditions that are important to everyone that are sitting there, right? So she came up with this idea of the Holiday and Celebration Discovery Lab. And this kind of evolved out of the idea of design thinking. You know, we just talked about design thinking strategies that you could use in your classroom for projects, right? So she loves giving her students time to explore and meet challenges and solve problems. And it gives her an opportunity to see authentic learning in action, right?

So she wanted to be present during that whole process in a creative and flexible way to investigate various holidays, celebrations, and traditions, right? Celebrations observed within families or within the school or across the country and around the world. So she kind of created this idea of this discovery lab, which is, I just think, phenomenal. And I think it’s something that allows you to, it’s flexible enough that it allows you to modify it for your needs. So for example, if you happen to be a private Christian charter school, right? You could use this to celebrate Christmas because that’s in your charter. That’s who you accept. But if you are in a public school that has a variety of cultures in your classroom, you could expand this to include everyone. Or what would be even better is if you were in that private Christian charter school, and you’d still use this to explore a variety of different cultures so that students celebrate their own, as well as understand and appreciate the traditions of others and see how our traditions can be linked. Because quite often there are commonalities across traditions, and it’s so interesting to see those because it helps us to see we’re more alike than unalike as the great Maya Angelou said. So here’s how this works, the Discovery Lab. She devised eight tasks that have students tapping into their current knowledge and understanding, as well as gathering information, categorizing, analyzing, risk-taking, imagining, communicating, planning, and designing, right? Doesn’t that sound like great? It’s all the things that we want our students to do for 21st century skills.

It’s practicing that within this idea of traditions. Additionally, she wanted students to have the opportunity to work independently or within a group of two or three. So you could do this with asynchronous learning. You could do this in a hybrid environment. You could do this in person, right? She can designate a few days each week during December, or she could just do it during one week. So if you are looking for something to do this upcoming week or next week that brings that celebration component in that still encourages learning, this could be great for that as well, right? And at the end, she compiled this into a holiday fair for the last day before the holiday break. So you could also have this as a celebration fair or a traditions fair or however you wanna host this and you can invite special guests. So you can have parents and principals to be invited.

And if you’re doing this all over Zoom or Google Meets, you can have people hop in. The nice thing about this is that with the technology we have, we can invite people in that maybe couldn’t make it before because of the technology, the web component, right? But you could also invite community members or legislators or business owners to participate, right? each team of students is responsible for sharing what they discovered, presenting a new holiday or celebration or tradition they believe should be added to the calendar, and trying to convince their guests through the work that they have shared right so their whole her whole idea here is to ignite curiosity and enthusiasm around different cultures and traditions that are all over our world and within students to foster a bond of understanding that contributes to bringing about a genuine, kind-hearted, and respected learning space with the end result of ultimately making the world a better place. So here are some of her discovery lab tasks. Now, don’t worry about writing it down. We’re going to include this in your show notes. Today’s show notes, and you’ll be able to download this list, right? Because I think you’re really going to find it helpful. So she has three tasks that she has set up for the Discovery Lab, and they’re going to rotate through the three tasks. So task one is to either create an ABCs of holiday celebrations or traditions around the world. And can you list at least one holiday or celebration for each letter of the alphabet? This gets them exploring, investigating, having that research component. Task two is to then pick a month of the year.
and create a bubble map linking the holidays and celebrations and traditions found within your selected month. And then think about how would you categorize these different holidays and celebrations and traditions. So trying to consider groupings, categories, classifications. If you’re looking for a math component, this is a great way to do that. And then task three is that using the information from tasks one and two, Develop a creative way to explain why it is important to celebrate a specific holiday tradition or celebration, right? So this could be done through a poem, a rap, a rhyme, a song, anything. Celebrations can involve special occasions, events, or even successes. So it doesn’t have to be something that is connected to a specific culture. It could be a celebration of success when you achieve something. Students could advocate for having a special day designated just for that. So again, I love this idea of being able to investigate and categorize and advocate for a variety of different traditions and holidays and cultures.

And so I think this is a different take on how we approach the holidays and celebrations. And we’re not just thinking about creating a fun craft or having a holiday party, but we’re really digging into what these traditions and holidays and celebrations mean to the people who are within our own class or community. And I think that makes it so much more powerful than a simple craft could. So I hope that this kind of idea from Barb was helpful to you as it was to me. It was such an eye-opening just take on this whole thing for me. And I’d love to hear your thoughts about it. And of course, if you’re enjoying the show and know somebody who could benefit from our discussions, please share the show. I’ll see you soon. Thanks for listening to the Artworks for Teachers podcast.