Today, February 13th, is the day before Valentine’s Day. In ESL class today, I worked with two small groups on English activities that pertained to Valentine’s Day. With the Level 1 learners, we worked on speaking and understanding vocabulary words that pertained to the Valentine’s Day holiday. This included words like cupid, valentine, mailbox, and other similar words. We worked on simple reading exercises that pertained to a Valentine’s Day story. With the Level 2 students, we focused on a cultural discussion about the meaning of Valentine’s Day in the United States. We discussed the differences between Valentine’s Day traditions in the United States compared to the different countries the students were from.
I had a lot of fun discussing the different Valentine’s Day traditions with the Level 2 students. Sharing holiday traditions is a great way to learn about other people’s cultures and stimulate conversation about differences between the cultures. Sharing in the cultural discussion helped me progress towards achieving the third course outcome that is outlined on our course page: to understand the benefits and challenges of living in a culturally diverse and globalized world. With students from twenty different countries, there were so many different types of Valentine celebrations compared to how we celebrate in the United States. It is important to understand the cultural differences because the way I would celebrate the same holiday in another country is much different. It was difficult for the students to understand some of the American traditions to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Many students did not understand that children as young as elementary school celebrated Valentine’s Day. This is one of the challenges of living in a culturally diverse world: having cultural misunderstandings. However, our conversation was very productive and demonstrated the positive effects of understand each other’s culture as well.
Partaking in the cultural discussions helped me develop a deeper appreciation for different cultures. The way each student described the Valentine’s Day holiday in his/her country was special and indicated certain values that were important to that country’s culture. I thought Valentine’s Day was an American holiday, but it turns out that Valentine’s Day has significant history and is celebrated in many countries. It was important to share the typical Valentine’s Day traditions in the United States, but it was also important to respect and understand the traditions that were important to each of the students. The reason we have many traditions and types of celebrations in the United States today is because of the rich cultural diversity that is present in the United States.