This appeared after a presentation I gave to Jacob's middle school:
DIVERSITY DAY AT CASTAIC MIDDLE SCHOOL
Cultures Come Together
Speakers at event encourage students to share traditions, understand differences.
By Bette Keva
SIGNAL STAFF WRITER
Thursday, October 27, 2005 THE SIGNAL
A woman of Mexican origin wore her colorful, long chiapas dress as she told students how her culture feels about family, religion, history and food.
Gloria Mercado-Fortine felt right at home at Castaic Middle School, since she grew up in Castaic. But she also felt proud to be wearing her traditional Mexican dress and imparting stories about her heritage.
She was pleased when one student spoke to her after her talk, saying he is sure he has Mexican blood, and vowed to talk to his grandmother to find out.
Another student told Mercado-Fortine that she is “proud to be a Mexican.”
Mercado-Fortine was one of about 35 speakers to come to the middle school’s first Diversity Day, born of a teacher’s idea and fine-tuned by Principal Marcia Dams and English teacher Maura Barcellos.
When the two, at a Washington, D.C., conference, learned what a Kentucky school was doing to teach children to embrace the differences among people of the world, they decided they could do it here.
The result was a full day of speakers, assemblies and Aztec dance exhibition performed to drums and flute. The speakers were home-grown. They were parents, friends, business associates, school staff members — anybody who could speak about their native culture. They came to talk about their childhoods in Cuba, Korea, Puerto Rico, Ghana, Egypt, Canada, Nicaragua, Italy, India, Ethiopia, Guatemala and other countries.
Marc Richards is from this country, but he had plenty to say about being in another culture, so to speak. He is disabled and in a wheelchair, yet he participated in the Los Angeles Marathon.
“Many of the stories we read in junior high have to do with overcoming obstacles in your life,” Barcellos said.
Marcella Kocen, who escaped communist Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) when she was 12, spoke to Alison Hunsaker’s English class, telling them what her life was like.
When it was rumored that Russia would invade Czechoslovakia in 1968, Kocen’s father searched for ways to get the family out of the country. They managed to leave, but then returned, only to leave again in 1969 by spending four days climbing a mountain to safety.
Kocen’s mother is Jewish, but even decades after the Holocaust, Jews still could not practice their religion in Czechoslovakia, Kocen said.
Eventually, the family settled in America, where Kocen showed her independent streak.
“At 11, I had my own apartment. At 26, 1 bought a house. I put myself through college’ she said.
She implored the students to know that “the sky is the limit. Shoot for the stars.”