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Of the many things Americans have to be thankful for this Thanksgiving holiday, diversity should be at the top of the list, especially since we live in a country where diverse cultures are celebrated, not discouraged!

Here is a character education project for high school or middle school students that can help introduce students to the many benefits of living in a diverse society:

Customs and Cultures Project
(Family & Consumer Science, English, World Cultures, Social Studies)

Students might be surprised to learn that diverse countries are represented in their own classroom! For example, many students have family holiday customs that stem from the roots of their Italian, Slovakian, Russian, Chinese, Mexican or Canadian grandparents and great grandparents, to name a few. One way to promote an understanding of this cultural diversity would be to facilitate a classroom discussion amongst your students about the various traditions each student's family celebrates during the holiday season. Whether the holiday is Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanakuh or Ramadan, there are bound to be some very interesting and ethnically rooted customs that students have to share about their family.

Here are some ideas to help students investigate and understand the many customs and cultures in their classroom:

1. Students can interview their grandparents or another elder in their family to learn about ethnic family customs that have been passed down from generation to generation in their family. Students could develop a list of questions that they will ask each relative.  They could treat the interviews as if they were journalists on assignment, writing an article about their family's customs and ethnic traditions. Once the students have conducted their interviews and written their articles, a classroom Customs and Cultures Newsletter can be created by the class and taken home to share with family members during the holiday season. Who knows, some of the families might borrow a custom or two from another student in the class!

2. Many families pass down recipes from generation to generation, and holidays are often occassions to feast on some of these delicious ethnic foods! Just as students can interview family members to learn more about family and cultural traditions, they can also ask the cooks in the family about recipes and holiday treats that have cultural roots in their family. Once all the students collect some recipes, the class can create a Customs and Cultures Cookbook.  This way, the students can learn about and perhaps try making some of the dishes from the cookbook that represent the diverse ethnicities found in their classroom.

3. Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated mainly in the United States and Canada. Just as Thanksgiving is one of our American traditions, there are many holidays celebrated throughout the world that most students know nothing about. Engage your students in activities that allow them to research the variety of holidays celebrated by students in the classroom that have ethnic roots. For example, students with Russian ethnicity celebrate Christmas and Easter on different days than the rest of the world. Why is this? Students can create a Customs and Cultures Calendar to help recognize the wide variety of holidays celebrated in their community, classroom and school.

Here are a few websites where teachers might find more inspiration for promoting "customs and culture" in the classroom:

Global TeachNet
http://www.globalteachnet.org/

Diversity Calendar
http://www3.kumc.edu/diversity/

The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education
http://spice.stanford.edu