Sahar Rajput (l) and her sister, Sassi Rajput, were two of the many Howell High School students who shared a taste of their family’s culture with fellow students during the school’s International Festival. Building better relations between the cultural and ethnic groups at Howell High School is one of the aims of the school’s International Festival.
“I’m really proud of this festival because it reflects the diversity of our school,” Spanish teacher William Sierra said. “When I think of Howell, I think of the different parts that make up the whole. We have a little bit of every culture and ethnic [group] here and we try to express that in our International Festival with song, music, dance and food.”
Puja Shastri performs a dance from Pakistan and India during the Howell High School International Festival. Meryl Norych, supervisor of classical and world language, agreed.
“This is the second International Festival for Howell High School,” she said when the event was held recently. “It’s a team experience, which Mr. Sierra has taken upon himself. We all joined forces to make this experience an enriching one for all students.”
PHOTOSBY DAVE BENJAMIN The Howell Steppers perform a routine as they share their African heritage with fellow Howell High School students. Principal Zina Duerbig called the school’s International Festival “a wonderful celebration of the students’ learning experiences of the different cultures and the diversity at Howell High School.” Norych said there are cultural and musical performances, including music and dance, from all students who would like to participate, and there are ethnic and cultural foods available for students to sample.
Many countries and foreign languages are represented at the festival, the supervisor noted, particularly those which are taught at the high school.
“We have Russian, Latin, Italian, Spanish and French,” Norych said.
There are approximately 1,150 world language students at Howell who are taught by 13 staff members. The all-day festival took place on April 21. Throughout the day individuals and groups of students performed for their classmates.
Puja Shastri, Sahar Rajput and her sister Sassi Rajput performed dances from Pakistan and India.
Several students, speaking in Italian, performed a skit about making pizza, and the Howell Steppers performed routines which exhibited their African heritage.
Principal Zina Duerbig called the event “a wonderful celebration of the students’ learning experiences of the different cultures and the diversity at Howell High School.”
Students had a lot of positive feedback about the event.
“It’s a big assortment of different cultures and nationalities,” said Laura Casaceli, 15, who takes Spanish as her foreign language. At the festival “you get to try dif-ferent things. It’s fun and you get to meet people from other classes and see what other classes are about.”
Laura said she enjoyed learning about the different nationalities.
Jason Lea-cock, 16, who was a disc jockey for the festival, said he liked the way the festival was set up.
“I liked the different performers and the fact that everybody is celebrating in different languages,” Jason said. “I think it helps diversity in the school, like different people from [various ethnic groups and nationalities] celebrate their culture and nobody would know about them otherwise. This is a good way to learn about it.”
“I like the food,” said Andrea Mango, 16. “The flan was good. It’s like a Mexican dessert. It looks like a pita that’s stuffed with cheese. That was pretty good.”
Andrea said she thinks the festival helps to foster understanding among cultures because people come together to enjoy the food and the music and learn to appreciate the different types of music and different types of culture.
Subika Mohammad, 16, said she likes experiencing all of the different cultures.
“It’s good to experience them,” Subika said. “I know a lot of people don’t know about the Indian dances. That was really interesting and it was good to experience. I could never move like that.”
Subika said she thinks the festival helps people share and understand more about each other and what’s going on. They can learn about the customs and the meanings of different cultures, she said.