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Pinckney elementary, in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, hosted their Festival of Trees event again this year, asking classes to choose a book as the theme for their tree. Fifth grade teachers, Ms. Klingelhofer (Ms. K for short) and Ms. Canavari chose “Take a Trip to Diverse City” by Shawna Ray as the theme of their tree, which won the “Most Creative” award at the festival in December. The students cut pictures from National Geographic and other magazines to create paper people that represented a variety of races and cultures; many of them hooked together as if they are holding hands.  One of my favorites had, “Together we are one” written on it. They wrapped the tree with a multi-colored scarf and placed a globe as the tree topper. Ball ornaments were decorated to represent various country flags and additional creative ornaments displayed diverse faces and symbols.

On the wall they placed pages of the book and the discussion questions that talk about Martin Luther King’s dream and the importance of celebrating diversity and working together in unity. Ms. K played the CD with B5 and Shawna Ray singing the book while parents and kids walked the halls and discovered each tree.

Ms. Canavari (pictured left with Ms. K) wrote, “Diverse City is such an amazing and powerful book and we felt that we needed to put it out there for everyone to embrace as well.  When we first told our classes about the book that we were going to do, it was so amazing to see how they perceived diversity. Outside of the races and ethnic groups they are always around they really did not have a good idea of what other cultures are made of and how we are all connected. I think this book and this project we did opened their eyes to a lot of different people and cultures. When we do hear someone talking poorly about someone’s background we use the book to correct them. This has been a wonderful learning experience not only for the children but for me as well.”