Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 13, 1993 TAG: 9311160269
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Frank Peters, an educator from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, said no, not today. But a few years ago it would have been a different story, Peters said at Gilbert Linkous Elementary School's International Day.
A doctoral student in education at Virginia Tech, Peters explained how he is considered ``Colouredcq,'' or of mixed race, in South Africa and until a few years ago needed a permit to enter certain neighborhoods under the system of apartheid.
Andy's question and one moments before from classmate Joey Slattery helped bring home the story of the troubled country of 40 million people still controlled by a white minority.
Many of the 600-plus students at the Blacksburg school got a taste of South Africa or some of nearly two dozen other countries represented by 40 parents and Virginia Tech students at Friday's International Day. The presentations spanned the globe from Central America to Africa, Europe and Asia.
Several other schools in Montgomery County hold such events. But at Gilbert Linkous it has particular significance, as 139 of its students come from other countries. That's the highest concentration of foreign students in any county school, a result of Tech's presence. The situation may change next year with the opening of a new elementary school west of Blacksburg, which will result in redrawn attendance boundaries.
On Friday, Linkous students were enjoying the diversity. International Day is a time for students from other countries to shine and take pride in their heritage, explained co-principal Ray Van Dyke. The names of those students were listed on a world map in the school lobby, with lines pointing to their countries.
And as volunteer coordinator Maria Rossi said, American-born students were encouraged to explore their family heritage and write the name of their ancestral homelands on cutouts shaped like their hands, which were then taped up in school hallways in a ``Hands Across Gilbert Linkous Elementary'' display.
In Guylenecq Wood's fifth-grade class, the students learned about the differences in weather, currency, schools, languages and politics between the United States and South Africa.
Emilene Peters, an educator who's studying geography at Tech, accompanied her husband for the presentation and counted to 10 for the class in Xhosacq, a Bantu language spoken by people in the Cape Province of South Africa. She also told the children that she didn't know the words to her country's national anthem and didn't want to know them until her people have a role in running South Africa.
Wood explained how the class would understand the situation in South Africa more when it covers the civil rights movement and other aspects of U.S. history from the 1960s.
While several fifth-grade classes rotated between short sessions on the Peterses' home country, China, Greece and India, kindergartners got a taste of some of those places and other countries, including Russia and Hungary.
Mallika Desucq, whose 5-year-old son Mihircq attends Linkous, delighted a class with an Indian parable about the a big lion and a little rabbit and by wrapping teacher Betty Day in a beautiful sari. On the other side of a partition, Chien Hsu and Ay-lin Chengcq of Taiwan used a writing brush to demonstrate the Chinese characters for dog, home, water, tree, mountain, and, by request, crocodile. Both women have daughters at the school.
Nora Novak, meanwhile, gave the kindergartners a taste of Hungary with pogacsacq-there's an accent on the ``a'' if you know how to put it in, a bread and cheese snack. Novak said she had trouble getting the American flour to rise like the Hungarian flour called for in the recipe.
But the students didn't mind. One little boy was outspoken on the subject: ``They were deliciouser than chicken.''
by CNB