September 27, 2019
By KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT
Rutherford County Schools
Food and cuisine. Style. Dance. National flags.
Those are just some of the elements that differentiate one culture from another.
With so many different cultures represented at LaVergne Middle School, principal Cary Holman met with his staff last year to talk about the idea of hosting an annual cultural festival.
Last year was such a success, LaVergne Middle will host a second annual event Friday, Oct. 4.
“We’re a very diverse school,” said Valencia Dobson, a keyboarding instructor at school who serves as the faculty advisor for the cultural festival, “and we need to do something to celebrate them, so we can learn from each other.”
Last year, there were 14 cultures represented at the festival — including Australia, Guatemala, Honduras, Iraq, Kenya, Mexico, Puerto Rico and others — by students and parents along with another nine countries that were presented via informational displays.
“We had those just set up so they can go around and read about other cultures,” Dobson said.
One addition to this year’s festival will be virtual reality field trips of all the cultures that are represented.
Dobson is originally from Montgomery, Alabama.
Her parents were in the military and she developed a passion for diversity. From the time she was born, they lived in Alabama, Louisiana, Portugal — where her sister was born during a three-year stay — and two different locations in California before returning to Alabama when Dobson was in sixth grade.
“I have a passion for diversity,” she said, “and I just feel like everybody should be able to embrace one another’s culture, heritage or whatever.
“That’s what we want to do for our students. We want to make sure that you realize everybody is not the same. We have one main common goal here and that is to come to school to learn. But (let’s) see how you do things different. Maybe it’s something that might be able to help me.”
“We want the public’s involvement — we really do,” she continued, “especially different organizations of other cultures.”
Dobson’s personal goal is to stoke curiosity in students and encourage them to recognize and understand cultural diversity to where they respect and champion one another’s differences.
“We all bleed red blood,” Dobson concluded.
PHOTOS PROVIDED