Recently, Southern Okanagan Secondary School celebrated diversity through their multicultural assembly.
In the assembly, students from all grades participated in speeches, songs, and dances that represented their cultures.
The assembly began with Mrs.Nazaroff’s students singing the national anthem in French. They were followed by a number of teachers and students who sang the Okanagan song with their hand drums.
Other performances included students originally from Thailand and Chile talk about the food, dances, and festivals in their native countries. They spoke of the symbols of respect as well as the traditional customs.
There were also students performing French and German songs, a French lip sync video presented by Mrs. Nazaroff’s French classes, a speech and dance on hip-hop culture, and even a bhangra dance done by two Grade 8 students.
I asked one of my school counsellors, Mrs. Dhaliwal, her opinion on why it was so important to celebrate diversity in schools.
“Celebrating all the different cultures in a school helps many students who come from different places feel welcome and included in the school. SOSS is full of extremely unique students who deserve to feel proud of where they come from.”
Mrs. Dhaliwal also hopes to help organize a Diwali event at the school for next year.
The multicultural assembly taught many students (me included) things we didn’t know, examples being how to greet people in Thailand, where hip-hop originated, and how beautiful German songs are.
With this knowledge, the hope is that we will be able to become more inclusive and empathetic people – not making judgments because of skin colour, race or the hobbies that people choose.
(Khushi Sharma is a student at SOSS.)
