Celebrating and Discovering Cultures
Service Learning and clubs prepare for the annual upcoming Diversity Week
By Selena Ganguly
Service Learning and clubs prepare for the annual upcoming Diversity Week
By Selena Ganguly
Mixing Pioneer's many cultures and traditions into one giant celebration of student heritage, Service Learning's annual Diversity week is set to take center stage on March 23, bringing with it a series of club-created events and activities to help educate the student body in understanding cultural diversity.
Working in tandem with clubs aimed at spreading their history, for the past two months, the Service Learning class has held weekly meetings to incorporate their ideas into the fair. Service Learning student and Pacific Islander Club president Isabella Palmona, 12, has been greatly involved in the planning of Diversity Week alongside Olivia Boe, 12, and explains how their contributions are incorporated.
“We come up with an idea and present it to the school. This idea gets passed to boards and other clubs during monthly meetings. As soon as everyone agrees on a topic, we pursue it,” Palmona said. “We ask everyone to fill out a Google Form of what days they are interested in. With that survey, we see where everyone is at and check up on them. From there, we just plan who is doing what each day.”
The theme for Diversity Week is looking at cultures as a wide horizon. Grace Kim, 12, president of the K-pop Club views the theme as a cusp of a horizon sitting above an entire sun of cultures, backgrounds, and ethnicities to discover on campus.
“If you can picture a landscape that has a little bit of everything and everyone in it, well, then I think that’s a great horizon,” said Kim. “You don’t get to experience this anywhere else in your life. This is a time to be social, this is a time to experience new things especially.”
Service Learning teacher Mike Burrell sees the outcomes of Diversity Week as a means to reduce the stereotypical ideology that roams around Pioneer’s campus.
“The whole point of the event is to celebrate the differences and to teach more tolerance, while limiting things like bullying, stereotyping and profiling,” said Burrell. “I think sharing other aspects of culture besides stereotypes can help diminish it.”
Diversity Week is not only for social awareness — it also helps students to explore their identity. Palmona discovered her cultural roots through this event and hope her peers experience this as well.
“I was kind of nervous to embrace my roots. As a senior now, I wish that I was able to tell the younger me to embrace my culture,” said Palmona. “I have been able to grow personally, but I hope my club members and anybody else who participates in Diversity Week feels comfortable to embrace their ethnicity and culture.”
During Diversity Week, there will be three different events — performance day, food fair day and activites day. A variety of clubs will participate during the three-day event in several forms. Kim will be offering a handmade Korean snack.
“It’s a traditional Korean dish called ‘kimbap.’ It looks like sushi, however, you can put whatever you want in there, vegetables, meat or both,” Kim said.
Diversity Week is an event that isn’t typically offered on high school campuses. To have an event to express the student body’s unique diversity is something AP U.S. history teacher Peter Glasser wished he had while growing up in high school.
“I’m just speaking as someone who never had that opportunity. My high school was 420 white kids and Becky Kim. My friend Becky was the only person of color in that high school,” said Glasser. “For Pioneer students to have an opportunity in a place that is so rich with different experiences — is so important that we don’t waste the opportunity."
Working in tandem with clubs aimed at spreading their history, for the past two months, the Service Learning class has held weekly meetings to incorporate their ideas into the fair. Service Learning student and Pacific Islander Club president Isabella Palmona, 12, has been greatly involved in the planning of Diversity Week alongside Olivia Boe, 12, and explains how their contributions are incorporated.
“We come up with an idea and present it to the school. This idea gets passed to boards and other clubs during monthly meetings. As soon as everyone agrees on a topic, we pursue it,” Palmona said. “We ask everyone to fill out a Google Form of what days they are interested in. With that survey, we see where everyone is at and check up on them. From there, we just plan who is doing what each day.”
The theme for Diversity Week is looking at cultures as a wide horizon. Grace Kim, 12, president of the K-pop Club views the theme as a cusp of a horizon sitting above an entire sun of cultures, backgrounds, and ethnicities to discover on campus.
“If you can picture a landscape that has a little bit of everything and everyone in it, well, then I think that’s a great horizon,” said Kim. “You don’t get to experience this anywhere else in your life. This is a time to be social, this is a time to experience new things especially.”
Service Learning teacher Mike Burrell sees the outcomes of Diversity Week as a means to reduce the stereotypical ideology that roams around Pioneer’s campus.
“The whole point of the event is to celebrate the differences and to teach more tolerance, while limiting things like bullying, stereotyping and profiling,” said Burrell. “I think sharing other aspects of culture besides stereotypes can help diminish it.”
Diversity Week is not only for social awareness — it also helps students to explore their identity. Palmona discovered her cultural roots through this event and hope her peers experience this as well.
“I was kind of nervous to embrace my roots. As a senior now, I wish that I was able to tell the younger me to embrace my culture,” said Palmona. “I have been able to grow personally, but I hope my club members and anybody else who participates in Diversity Week feels comfortable to embrace their ethnicity and culture.”
During Diversity Week, there will be three different events — performance day, food fair day and activites day. A variety of clubs will participate during the three-day event in several forms. Kim will be offering a handmade Korean snack.
“It’s a traditional Korean dish called ‘kimbap.’ It looks like sushi, however, you can put whatever you want in there, vegetables, meat or both,” Kim said.
Diversity Week is an event that isn’t typically offered on high school campuses. To have an event to express the student body’s unique diversity is something AP U.S. history teacher Peter Glasser wished he had while growing up in high school.
“I’m just speaking as someone who never had that opportunity. My high school was 420 white kids and Becky Kim. My friend Becky was the only person of color in that high school,” said Glasser. “For Pioneer students to have an opportunity in a place that is so rich with different experiences — is so important that we don’t waste the opportunity."