Name of the tool

Holiday Line  

Links to the keystones
attitudes, awareness, knowledge

Aim of tool/ Brief overall description
The main aim is: to raise curiosity about and empathy with other peoples` cultures and history.

Brief overall description
One of the steps towards making teaching intercultural is to add national/cultural/religions holidays of each ethnical group represented in class in to the curriculum. It raises empathy and promotes a broader vision of the world. Listening to, or reading about, holidays of others, helps student teachers to a better understanding of their own history, background and traditions. Some of Russian and Estonian national/religion holidays are the same, but they celebrate it at different time and in different way.

Main methods

Individual work
Group work (mixed by cultural background)
Frontal discussion

Description of the process and the possible stepping stones

1. Every participant receives a pen and moderator invite each participant to think of 5 national holidays, which are important for their culture, and to write their names on the big calendar.
2. When everyone has done this, moderator asks them to say why those holidays are important and why they have chosen them.
3. Participants are asked to join together in small groups and to chose one holiday, which is the same in both cultures, they are going to work with. They have to find out, what kind of similarities and differences there are in traditions (food, activities etc.) how each nationality celebrates the same holiday. It should be done as Venn diagram.

Reflection and evaluation
Moderator should lead the follow up discussion to let participants think and discuss about, what traditions are interesting to the members of other culture, what traditions they like etc.

Instruments

-

Equipment

One year simplified calendar drawn in to the large paper or board
Pens and/or pencils for all member
Relatively big paper for each group

Requirements
Participants must have a basic introduction about their national holidays

References

• All different, all equal. European youth campaign against racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism and intolerance. 1995. Education pack. Ideas, resources, methods and activities for informal intercultural education with young people and adults. European Youth Centre: Strasbourg, 90–91.

Author
Inge Timoštšuk, Anne Uusen, Mai Normak

Institution

TALLINN UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF TEACHER EDUCATION, Estonia