There has been a lot of dressing up lately! Between Halloween and Holderness Day, just one week apart, there were four days of dressing up in costumes or representative garb.
This has provided a great opportunity to have discussions with our students about just what they are doing when they dress in costume or in ways to represent their school spirit. Before Halloween the office of multicultural and community life asked students to consider carefully their costume choices. We asked the kids to consider the following questions:
1) Does my costume promote negative images of women, the GLBTQ community, people with disabilities, etc.?
2) Am I dressing up as another race or culture?
3) Would I feel uncomfortable wearing my costume around a group of people of that culture?
4) Does my costume involve a sexualized name of another culture (e.g. Poca-hottie)
5) Does it involve changing the color of my skin?
6) Could my costume potentially offend people?
We suggested that if students felt comfortable with their choices after reflecting on these questions, then they were probably off to a great start to celebrating Halloween. There were some fantastic costumes that day and wide participation!
We followed up by inviting students to drop into the Multicultural Education Center to discuss these stereotypes and why they are hurtful. We enjoyed some great discussions between Halloween and Holderness Spirit Week that made our community more aware and brought us closer together.
It is important to seize these teachable moments in the busy life of a school, especially as we strive to teach the values in our mission of personal responsibility, life-long learning, high achievement, and fostering care for others and committed citizenship.
