Welp, the public school asked the Americanos to participate or present in some way at the Thanksgiving fiesta.  Being a bilingual school,  they attempt to also include cultural events in the English-Spanish curriculum.  Mostly, it seems British focused (as in Anglo day) but they were exited for turkey crafts and pilgrim hats and Indian feathers for thanksgiving.  Pinterest helps, I’m sure. 

So, thanksgiving is a bit cringe worthy to me as a history teacher.  I fall a bit long on the less-than-patriotic invader scenario side.  But, these are Spanish primeria (elementary) kids and their parents.

So, I encouraged our group of four families (moms) to focus on Squanto first. Love Squanto, poor guy.  We broke the story into four parts – squantos tale,  the puritans voyage, the hard winter and squanto’s help in the spring, culminating in a Thanksgiving fiesta. We dressed up, made posters, and kids quasi-acted it out while I told it as a story. I speak English, though, so we also made a PowerPoint with the words in Spanish for the benefit of Spanish parents.

 It was great!  And such a fun way for us Anerican families to be involved. I was impressed at the parent turnout, impressed that they took donations for Caritas, impressed that the kids waited to eat their snack-feast until presentations were over. The most amazing thing to me, though was to see the entire school – one class per grade easily fit into a mini gymnasium.  It’s so nice.