DEIB-log: October Recap

Hello Everyone,

October was quite the busy month! With plenty of holidays and events to celebrate, children around Greene Towne have been working, creating, and baking many wonderful things. We started off the month by celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, Rosh Hashanah, and Sukkot. Students had the opportunity to choose from different works in their classroom for Rosh Hashanah including a pomegranate dot work, apple punching and cutting work, honey cutting work, and were offered a matching work featuring the four species that comprise the lulav when celebrating Sukkot. A large collaborative display featuring an apple tree and honey bees was created and on display in the second floor hallway. For Hispanic Heritage Month a papel picado banner was created and classrooms were offered a matching and memory work highlighting a variety of Mexican artists, both indigenous and naturalized. These works serve as stepping stones to further conversations about culture, identity, and the special meaning certain symbols can hold for different people. Kindergartners in Primary ADM also baked barmbrak, a traditional Irish recipe, to celebrate Halloween which was later shared at a celebratory tasting circle with all their classmates. Transitioning into November, multiple classrooms helped create a collaborative Día de Muertos display featuring cempasúchil (marigolds), the repurposed papel picado banner from Hispanic Heritage Month, and calaveras. Lower Elementary students wrote touching poems dedicated to loved ones to go along with their decorative calavera. Some students also participated in creating a colorful, shining Diwali themed display hanging next to the doorway in our first floor lobby. 

This type of DEIB work within the classroom works hand in hand with the Montessori principles behind practical life work. By creating decorations to beautify our space it encourages the children to care for their environment which helps build a foundation for caring about their community, city, and earth at large later in life. The act of pouring, which was done to help create the rangoli themed Diwali posters currently on display in our first floor lobby, helps develop fine motor skills and coordination. Though an art project may seem aesthetic in nature, the skills required to make it, the concentration it takes, the independence it helps build, the sense of order in cleaning up after ourselves, all further reinforce the practical life work students are engaging in on the daily. Especially when the work takes on a cultural lens it encourages confidence and a stronger sense of self when students can see themselves represented and celebrated in their spaces and community. We will be continuing conversations on indigenous communities in our area, thankfulness, and caring for our environment further in November. 

Selected reading from this past month’s highlights collection shelf of the Helena A. Grady Diversity Library: 

• Tamar’s Sukkah – Ellie Gellman
• Apples and Honey: A Rosh Hashanah Book – Joan Holub/Cary Pillo 
• Funny Bones: Posada and his Day of the Dead Calaveras – Duncan Tonatiuh
• What Do You Celebrate? Holidays and Festivals Around the World – Whitney Stewart
•  Diwali In My New Home – Shachi Kaushik

– Ms. Allison (awiedman@gtms.org)