
DATE: Saturday, May 31, 1997                TAG: 9705310270

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, staff writer 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   78 lines

STUDENTS GET LOOK AT ``OLD'' SUFFOLK CULTURE

This is how far students at Booker T. Washington Elementary School would have to travel to experience firsthand some of the things portrayed at their ``Multicultural Fair Week'' that ended Friday:

Next door. Across the street. Around the block. The other side of town.

Home.

Among the displays on European, African and Asian countries in the gym were ones on American southern cooking and old Suffolk. Bite-sized samples of chocolate-iced cake, corn bread, fried chicken and ``Papa John's Beans,'' a combination of black-eyed peas, rice and sausage. Old photos, news clippings and other information about their hometown.

``We're trying to tell the kids where they come from before they go somewhere,'' said Princess Benn, a teaching assistant. ``A lot of the kids are young and don't know `old' Suffolk.''

There was the other, traditional stuff, too - foods, pictures, flags, dolls, clothes, music and such from countries like Scotland, Germany, Greece, Russia, the Middle East, Kenya, Nigeria, China, Mexico. The week's worth of displays, demonstrations and student presentations was aimed at developing awareness and acceptance of different cultures.

But even the everyday, local things represented distinct cultures, the fair's organizers said. As did the horseshoes at a world-sports table - the game is a symbol of a largely bygone era, or culture. So did the sign-language charts and storybooks displayed on a table devoted to the culture of the deaf - the city's two young hearing-impaired students are taught at the school.

``It makes them more sensitive to students with disabilities,'' said Lisa Schneider, who teaches the hearing impaired. ``They see that they're not so different from themselves.

``When we say `multicultural' - this is a culture. It may not be a country, but it's a culture.''

Still, much of it was mostly fun. Like putting a Scottish kilt or a Middle-East headdress on students. Or ringing a Greek goat's bell. Or learning a song in sign language.

Sometimes programs like this and others in schools that aren't strictly teaching the ABCs have been criticized as taking away from valuable education time. But even reknowned schools critic E.D. Hirsch Jr., author of the back-to-basics ``Cultural Literacy,'' said multicultural lessons don't hurt if they help children recognize achievements by many different kinds of people.

Booker T. staffers agreed.

``When you have an understanding of people around the world, we have a connection . . ., we're all part of one whole,'' said the fair's chairwoman, Joy Zambelis, whose husband is Greek. To illustrate, she held up a Disney storybook about Dumbo the Elephant, written in Greek.

She also noted that the fair coordinates with Virginia's beefed-up Standards of Learning, the statewide curriculum guide calling for second-graders to learn about China and third-graders to learn about Greece.

``So at the same time we're accomplishing two feats: teaching what Richmond wants them to learn, and enlarging on it,'' Zambelis said.

Second-grader Cassie White got a kick out of how the Chinese write from right to left, and learned that tacos came from Mexico, not just Taco Bell. The 9-year-old also noticed at least one similarity in most people around the world: ``They wear clothing.''

Older students picked up deeper lessons.

Chela Sheppard, an 11-year-old fifth-grader, struggled to find the right words for learning tolerance, then gave this example: ``Some people say the Chinese can't fit in in America. But you can't judge a book by its cover. They can.''

Added classmate Steven Dent, also 11, ``Some kids can learn that we're not the only country that's big, that we're not the only country in the world.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by TAMARA VONINSKI/The Virginian-Pilot

At the Hawaiian booth, Adriane Harden, 6, right, finishes a hula

dance while Nikki Luck, 7, left, waits her turn. The booth was part

of the Multicultural Extravaganza, a weeklong effort at Booker T.

Washington Elementary School. Teacher Mary Biggs, background, helped

adjust the skirts to fit.

At the Hawaiian booth, Adriane Harden, 6, right, finishes a hula

dance while Nikki Luck, 7, left, waits her turn. The booth was part

of the Multicultural Extravaganza, a weeklong effort at Booker T.

Washington Elementary School. Teacher Mary Biggs, background, helped

adjust the skirts to fit.