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 From our reporter in Boston: Josiah Quincy Elementary School at Boston held its “Diverse Day” in the Gym on the 19th morning. Through singing, dancing, reciting and other forms of performances, they promoted the understanding of different races and cultures among the close to a thousand teachers, students and parents. They also appealed the harmonic coexistence of all races.
During the speech, the Principal of the Josiah Quincy Elementary School, Mr. Shaohua He, pointed out that the students of the school are from many different countries and regions. They invited students to perform and introduce the culture, arts and customs from their own countries to enrich the cultural life and the knowledge of the students, and to strengthen the understanding among the teachers, the students and the parents.
Mr. Shaohua He mentioned that this “Diverse Day” celebration was a cooperation among the Josiah Quincy Elementary School, the Quincy High School and the Kwong Kow Chinese
School. Besides promoting the understanding of diverse culture, it also promoted the cooperation among the educational institutes in the community. He promised that the Quincy Elementary School would keep working hard to build the harmonic coexistence of various cultures and races in the community.
On the wall of the gym, there were more than 10 huge paintings of famous people who devoted their whole life to strive for equal rights and interests among different races, including Dr. Martin Luther King, President Lincoln and so on. There was also a big slogan saying “We Are In This Together,” which pointed out the theme of the “Diverse Day”, namely everyone needs to work hard together.
The performances on the “Diverse Day” celebration were planned by Mr. Fowler. There were dancing, singing and reciting. The students from the Grade 2 and 3 bilingual classes performed Hawaii Dancing, which was guided by Ms. Zhu. They brought sunshine to Boston at the beginning of spring. Teacher Benjamin helped the Grade 4 students from different cultural backgrounds to perform the poem reciting “I am the creativity.” He taught students to accept their various cultural backgrounds, and also to accept the differences and similarities among individuals.
The Kwong Kow Chinese School brought three very exciting performances to the celebration. The seven Grade 2 to 4 students recited “Chinese Word Classic” with standard mandarin pronunciation; Dr. Huijie Miao showed “Accelerated Mandarin” with her kindergarten kids; and Mr. Sonny Li guided students to perform Chinese Kungfu.
The Principal of the Kwong Kow Chinese School pointed out that the “Chinese Word Classic” reciting was designed to broaden the view of the students through studying the rich content of the Chinese culture. Under the guidance of Ms. Fei Wang, the students can not only reciting some chapters in the classics, but also understand the meaning of traditional Chinese culture. Kwong Kow Chinese School has also been running “Accelerated Mandarin” class, which taught 200 Chinese characters to their kindergarten kids in just 3 months. This class achieved amazing results and has been really successful.
Another highlight of the “Diverse Day” was the singing performance from the Quincy High School students who had graduated from the Quincy Elementary School.
The celebration ended smoothly with the ensemble, “We are the whole world,” from the Grade 3 students, guided by Teacher Tobin.
It is reported that the Josiah Quincy Elementary School is one of the best 50 elementary schools in MA. They have 80% to 90% of the students passing the MA unified level test, every year. Among the more than 800 students, 70% are Asian, 10% are African, and another 10% are South American.
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