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News Briefs Regnart celebrates more than holidays
Parents came in droves Feb. 25, drawn by the food, costumes and dancing to celebrate cultures of the world at Regnart Elementary School's second International Celebration.
More than 500 parents and children attended the evening portion of the two-day event to get a taste of the how countries celebrate their holidays. The following day, students visited the parent-manned booths with their teachers.
"This is an evening for families to spend time together," said Corinne Lambert, member of the International Celebration committee. "[Feb. 26] the children will get more of a lesson."
Parent volunteers donated their time by organizing booths and representing different countries at the event. The countries represented at the celebration were China, Germany, Great Britain, India, Iran, Korea, Switzerland and the United States.
"I like showing the parents of Regnart about Korea," said Andrew Yeou, a parent volunteer. "People have images of Korean women in traditional dress, but they've never seen men dressed up. That's why I wanted to show them what men wear."
In addition to the parent involvement, a group of Regnart third-to sixth-grade students presented two performances of a folk dance from western India. Originally, the school choir was scheduled to perform, but they had to cancel three weeks prior to the event.
While the theme for this year's event was holidays, last year's was children's games. Some parents were asking Jill Lin, chair of the International Celebration committee
if she had any children's games left over from last year.
The event allowed parents and students alike to learn that although New Year's is an international holiday, countries celebrate it on different days, and also many cultures have holidays similar to Halloween which allow people to dress in costume.
Spurred by a desire to expand the school's Chinese New Year celebration, Regnart began the International Celebration.
"In years past, there have been wonderful celebrations of Chinese New Year, but there was concern that some other cultures were being left out," said Vivian Franklin, principal. "We wanted to acknowledge all cultures and the qualities in life that bond us all. The idea is to celebrate not just diversity, but the commonalties amongst us all."
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Cupertino, California Since 1947
