Holidays and Traditions

This collage is a response to the reading "Every Day a Festival" in our textbook Roots of Art Education Practice by Mary Ann Stankiewicz.

In it I show a teacher teaching about different holidays and celebrations with a book above her that's flippable with different holidays and celebrations from different cultures around the world. The rest of the spread I made into a library to represent how there's even more holidays and celebrations and traditions from different cultures to learn about than are even listed in just the one book and that there's always more to learn.

In the reading there was en emphasis on recognizing the seasons in order to be festive and explained how the school year was organized around the seasons in early 19th century America and how that changed over the century with industrialization and transportation. Creating lessons and activities centered more around seasons would allow students to be festive without relying on specific holidays for lesson plans in case some students don't celebrate those holidays and celebrate different ones. However trying to avoid themed holiday work all together could be a missed opportunity for kids to learn about holidays and cultures they may not be familiar with. The reading also mentioned the holidays as huge motivating factors when getting the students to work by having a scheduled break and social gathering to look forward to.

Henry Turner Bailey, an educator from the reading from the early 1900s, even recommended that the kids make calendars as part of their artwork. When I was in middle school I invented what I call my "accordion calendar," a strange calendar made of folding paper that I decorate myself that worked better for managing my adhd and time blindness than any other existing calendar. I'm sure I could brainstorm some lesson plan ideas where kids can create and decorate their own calendars and learn about different holidays from around the world that they could place in them.

A great resource for planning lessons around the holidays and for learning more about holidays from different cultures is https://www.antiracistartteachers.org/home