This holiday season Ms. Meditz of Skyview Elementary School in Pinellas Park, FL hopes to open her students’ eyes to the different cultures of their classmates. Her class is frequently in a situation where they hear their classmates speaking in different languages and Ms. Meditz thinks it would be great if her class could learn more about their peers. Throughout the year, she has found that her students benefit and learn the most from hands on projects. To help her students understand the holidays and traditions of their friends, Ms. Meditz devised a classroom craft.Through the use of her requested materials (glue, feathers, clay, colored pencils, and crayons) Ms. Meditz’s class will create rain sticks and mold figures of different abilities. She hopes that eventually her students will share with others in the school what they have learned by hanging their projects in the hallway. The cultural creations won’t stop at rain sticks, but will also include masks and drawings of other cultures.The end goal of her classroom project is to foster an environment where tolerance and understanding of differences is encouraged. Ms. Meditz believes that “in today’s society feeling excepted is widely important to success and confidence to the future.” To find out more about how to make Ms. Meditz’s vision of diversity and acceptance a reality, check out her project page.
