CELEBRATING DIVERSITY
Division Street Elementary School event gives community a chance to learn more about different cultures
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » Division Street Elementary School celebrated dozens of countries at their annual Cultural Fair.
The school began the twohour program several years ago, partly because it’s the English as a New Language school, and principal Greer Miller believed it would be “fantastic to celebrate all the cultural diversity.”
The gymnasium featured various performances, including Division Street Elementary School’s recorder ensemble performing songs from around the word, third grade students demonstrating South American folk dances, Skidmore’s Latin dance team performing and more.
The Friday night event provided an opportunity for students, their parents and community members to learn about various countries.
“It’s absolutely amazing how everybody pulls together and it has become a tradition now,” Miller said. “We have the high school foreign language clubs here, we have the middle school bagpipe club, we have international clubs from the middle school.
“It’s a whole community event, and it’s just so cool that we can have a night to celebrate. Everybody is fantastic with making samples of food from the countries, they have PowerPoint presentations to show pictures and artifacts, some of them wearing their traditional garments, too.
“It’s just cool for our students to experience it.”
Marcia Soares, an ENL teacher, helps every year. Last year she was stationed in the Brazil room. The year before Cuba. This year she helped teach students and community members about Mexico.
“It’s amazing. Not only that but the kids embrace the differ-
“It’s absolutely amazing how everybody pulls together and it has become a tradition now. We have the high school foreign language clubs here, we have the middle school bagpipe club, we have international clubs from the middle school.” — Principal Greer Miller
but the kids embrace the different cultures, and it makes them knowledgable of different cultures, open to different cultures, tolerable and they understand that when there’s someone that comes in that doesn’t speak their language they are very opened to that person and know how to help them,” Soares said. “They use a lot of body cues.
“It’s amazing that we’ve developed that culture at this school and that it’s accepted by the students and embraced by the teachers and students.”
Miller is always amazed at the amount of community support for the yearly event.
“We have former parents here, we have people that are not even connected with Division Street Elementary School helping us out to share in the cultures and to show their pride in their country,” Miller said.