REWIND: NC Cultural Enrichment Day (March 5, 2014)

At our school, we have an enrichment team that serves students in rotation once a week.  On the scheduled day, students in grades 1-5 rotate through media, art, music and P.E.  We often ate lunch together and got talking one day about putting together something cool and different during our rotation.  Because 4th grade studies everything North Carolina, we thought it would be interesting to integrate this into our enrichment rotation.  Knowing that teachers and administration would be more likely to accept the idea if it didn't mess up everybody's schedule, we decided to come up with an all day event for 4th and 5th graders during our normal enrichment schedule.  We called this event the NC Cultural Enrichment Day.  see the flier HERE

With a little bit of planning (we started in September) we researched some potential guests, came up with a projected cost and asked PTO for help (they were delighted to help).

In Media, I was lucky enough to get  Nora Dial-Stanley, a member of the North Carolina Lumbee tribe and storyteller.  She was WONDERFUL!  She had such a melodious voice and charmed the children with her amazing stories.  Nora has a true gift.  She had no script; she just spoke from her heart.  And in each class she was able to convey in an age appropriate manner the injustices that her people have suffered.  She was highly engaging and the students LOVED her.

 

In P.E., Linda Zarick was grateful to have world class clogger Elliot Skeen and his daughter Megan.  Elliot has not only been clogging almost all of his life, he has been instructor and coach to multiple teams over the years.  He even met his beautiful wife, Cheryl, at a clogging event many years ago and they have danced together for more than 20 years since then.  Elliot talked with the kids about some traditional Appalachian dancing and even had the kids do some basic square dancing steps.

In music, Seth McKnight was delighted to be able to share the talents of Rebecca Branson Jones with his students.  Ms. Jones is an accomplished musician, photographer, and documentary filmmaker among other things.  Rebecca has most recently been teaching at ASU in Boone, completed an internship with world renowned producer Ken Burns, and travels with her music group The Buck Stops Here when time allows.   Rebecca demonstrated some traditional Appalachian musical instruments as well as leading the students in song.  

Finally, in art, Brandy Mulkey kicked off a month long unit on NC traditional crafts by teaching 4th grade the fine art of basket weaving and 5th grade the centuries old tradition of pottery by creating small face jugs.  Students loved begin able to get their hands dirty.  At the end of the unit, students were able to bring home their designs just in time for mother's day.

Because we had brought in special guests, we put on a luncheon in the media center for all those that participated.  We invited administrators, PTO and the local newspaper to join us.  We feasted on chicken pie, green beans, applesauce, banana pudding and sweet tea.  The event was such a success that we hope to make it an annual one.  We also spoke with Mrs. Dial-Stanley about doing a similar event in November for Native American History Month.

Read the article by Daneesha Edwards here:  www.the-dispatch.com