Dr Ana Kirova - University of Alberta

I was lucky to be invited to attend a workshop on Friday 2 May - organised by the MacEwen Early Learning and Childcare Centre. My amazing friend and host Mary Lynne has some amazing connections and the early childhood centre is also what is called a 'lab' centre. This means that they host many groups of visitors during the year and faculty staff have close connections with the centre. They have also been one of the development centres for the new Alberta curriculum.The workshop was a 'low key' dialogue about culture, specifically focused on celebrations. The teachers have been reflecting on the impact of celebrations throughout the year on the programme and the expectations this has created from the community.

Activity time:

We went through an exercise where we thought of a celebration and had to identify our not negotiable through to those things we can do without. We used the diagram below to select a celebration and as an individual - at the top we identified something about that celebration that was critical for you, then next two very important, three in middle as important, next two as could do without if necessary and that last one represented the feature that was not important at all.

When we got talking in groups with our diagrams, it became clear that the things in the middle row were typically a 'shared space'. It was a really useful activity to go through as we got to see the things that are important to others that we may not have identified as being so critical. It was interesting to see how much we shared as a 'important' and could see how this would be a great way to develop curriculum experiences around cultural celebrations. Ana shared how the three boxes at the top are typically those things that describe how we celebrate at home and are not necessarily as relevant for our work at the early childhood setting. I really liked this way of thinking about it as it can be difficult to 'practice the celebration in a shared space'.
We talked about how over time cultural celebrations get distorted through retail hype and the opportunity to 'make a buck' and mostly this was what was represented in the box at the bottom.
Did you know that in many cultures, birthdays are not important - your name is the reference for celebration and this can be in recognition of a saint or flower? I love this idea.

Discussion points:

• We discussed the importance of 'minimising' the significance of dominant cultural celebrations to make space for cultural celebrations of all children.
• Commercialism strips away culture - making a choice not to participate in a commercialised construct of a celebration.
• Political correctness is deadly to multiculturalism
• having mature conversations about culture with children

Quotes of the session - 
"It is not up to teachers to teach a child their [the child's] culture"
"It does not matter so much what we say - it is what we do"