This evening as a guest post, I am delighted to feature one of my colleagues, Elizabeth Aguilar from: Education for Life in Public Schools. Elizabeth teaches 6th grade language arts (English), social studies (history), and art. On an average day she has 30 students per class and teaches 2 - 3 different sets of students for a total average of 60 -90 students. Elizabeth has taken on teaching Education for Life, in a public classroom setting and has inspired us as a pioneer for Education for Life. I hope you enjoy her latest post below. She is an inspiration to us all. Thank you, Elizabeth.
A Festival of Light
We have wonderful diversity of cultures and traditions represented at
our school. Our students’ families are from all over the world every
continent is represented except Antarctica. Therefore, the holiday
season means different things to different students. We honor these
different traditions in many ways at our school, specially in this last
week before our Winter Break. In my classroom I wanted to focus on the
shared tradition of “Light” during this time of the year. So many
cultures and traditions have Light as a theme in their holidays. Most
even have some sort of “Festival of Light”. Well, in Social Studies we
are still in ancient Egypt so I was curious. Did the Egyptians have a
Festival of Light? To my great surprise they did. Herodotus, a Greek
historian in BC tells of the festival of Lychnocaia, “the lighting of
lamps”. Lamps were lit in rows on the outside of houses around this
time of the year to help Osiris find his way back from the underworld.
I shared this information with my students. I also found some
wonderful pictures of the different expressions of light in
Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, as well as the story
of Egypt and light in the natural world. We brainstormed to understand
what Light symbolized. The students thought it symbolized: peace,
happiness, life, power, energy - these were their words. I told them
that I wanted us to experience some type of celebration of Light but
that I knew we could not have lit candles in school since it would be a
fire hazard. We could, however, have a string of lights. Thanks to
help from
Erika Glazzard, a fellow EFL teacher, I had come up with a
lovely plan. We would make a walking spiral of light that would lead
the students to its center where they could pick up a glass stone that
would symbolize a personal excellence quality that they wanted to
nurture in themselves in the coming year. I needed a focal point of
light at the center so I brought in an angel that I had from my
daughters' childhood.
The visual experience of having the lights on the floor was
beautiful. It was like walking inside our Milky Way Galaxy. I played
Pachelbel’s Canon in D for music in the background as each student made
their own way into the heart of the lights. After every one had a turn
we sat around and had a few minutes of silence as we all tried to expand
our own heart’s light. I’ve asked the students to keep their glass
stone to remind them of that special quality that they want to nurture
in themselves.
I am a public school teacher in northern California. I teach 6th grade
language arts (English), social studies (history), and art. This past
summer I participated in Education for Life workshops and activities. I
was so excited by what I learned that I wanted to try it in my
classroom and document how the EFL principles translate into the public
school system. It’s an on going great adventure that is turning out to
be fun and rewarding
Are you a public school teacher and want to see how these teachings can be applied in a public school setting? Follow Elizabeth at:
I shared this information with my students. I also found some
wonderful pictures of the different expressions of light in
Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, as well as the story
of Egypt and light in the natural world. We brainstormed to understand
what Light symbolized. The students thought it symbolized: peace,
happiness, life, power, energy - these were their words. I told them
that I wanted us to experience some type of celebration of Light but
that I knew we could not have lit candles in school since it would be a
fire hazard. We could, however, have a string of lights. Thanks to
help from Erika Glazzard, a fellow EFL teacher, I had come up with a
lovely plan. We would make a walking spiral of light that would lead
the students to its center where they could pick up a glass stone that
would symbolize a personal excellence quality that they wanted to
nurture in themselves in the coming year. I needed a focal point of
light at the center so I brought in an angel that I had from my
daughters' childhood.
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