Seventh-grade social studies students at Kennedy Middle School traveled from Iceland to Ireland to India and places beyond and in between Wednesday evening but never left campus.
Hundreds of students and their families packed the gym for the first Multicultural Fair after school. For the event, students researched a country that interested them and presented what they learned about its history, culture and traditions on trifold posters.
Students also served up a taste of their countries with samples of popular foods, and some dressed in traditional clothing.
"Our last unit of the school year is world history in the modern era, and we decided a great way for kids to learn would be to look at individual countries during this time," said Stephanie Prandy, who teaches seventh-grade social studies and a STEM exploratory class and organized the fair with Kennedy's other two seventh-grade social studies teachers, Matthew Kennamer and Catherine Matthews.
The students self-selected groups and had 10 days of class time to put their presentations together.
"The kids were so excited and stoked from the day I introduced the project," Prandy said. "They were, like, 'Let's go,' and that's a hard thing to do after testing is over."
In addition to learning about world history, the students honed their skills beyond the classroom as future employees in the modern era.
"When you think about the 21st-century worker, employers will want someone who is capable of presenting in front of a group, who is able to sort through researched information and who can decide what is important and what is not," Prandy said. "Here, students actually get to show off and feel good about what they're doing and answer questions about what they have learned. Kids sometimes just want to cut and paste, but this makes learning impactful."
Kennamer agreed, saying learning world history can help students acquire real-world skills.
"We wanted them to work on public speaking and to learn more about group collaboration," said Kennamer, Kennedy's first-year teacher of the year. "These students really had to work hard and dig deep for their projects to come together."
Shania Alam, with friends Nakayia Whetstone and Evelyn Meza, served each person who stopped at her table a mango lassi, a creamy beverage made with mangoes, milk and sugar that is popular in India.
Alam and her family are from India but she still picked up some new information about her native country.
"I learned about historical events and the flag and how to write in Hindi," she said.
On Thursday and today, the teachers extended the project and took students outside to play games from around the world.
"My mindset is hands-on," said Prandy, a former elementary school teacher who has taught at the middle level four years. "I'm always trying to bring ways that middle school students can experience learning and not just sit behind a textbook at a desk."
An Aiken native, Larry Wood is a general assignment reporter. He started at the Aiken Standard in September 2014. He highly recommends the mango lassi.