The winter season in the Northern Hemisphere is a time filled with celebrations, traditions, and holidays that reflect cultural diversity. While Christmas often takes center stage, it’s important for teachers to recognize that not all students celebrate Christmas. Some may observe other holidays like Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Diwali, while others may not celebrate holidays at all. As educators, fostering an inclusive classroom environment during this season is essential for make sure that every students feels valued and represented. This is also an opportunity to learn more about your students and discover meaningful ways to connect with them.
Teaching About Diverse Winter Holidays in Spanish
If you’re a Spanish teacher looking to incorporate cultural diversity into your lessons, Holidays and Celebrations in Spanish (Las Celebraciones) is the perfect resource for your classroom. This engaging teaching tool introduces students to various global celebrations while helping them build Spanish language skills.
What’s Included:
Two leveled readings
Passages suitable for upper elementary students
Comprehension activities
True or False activity
Two writing/drawing activities for students to share their own celebrations
Why It’s Important to Teach About Diverse Holidays
By highlighting a variety of holidays and traditions, we promote cultural awareness and respect in the classroom. Discussing celebrations like Ramadan, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Diwali alongside Christmas allows students to see the richness of global traditions and helps them appreciate their classmates’ unique backgrounds. These lessons encourage empathy, build community, and create a classroom environment where every student feels included.
How to Use This Resource in Your Classroom
Warm-Up Activities: Start each lesson with a holiday-related question or vocabulary review to engage students.
Holiday Comparisons: Use Venn diagrams or group discussions to compare and contrast celebrations like Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa.
Crafts and Storytelling: Incorporate crafts and stories about Día de Reyes or other holidays to bring traditions to life.
Student Reflections: Encourage students to share their own traditions or create a mini-project about a celebration they learned.
During this time of the year in the United States Christmas is everywhere! On TV ads, on the radio, on the cup of coffee you purchase, and more – and students and families who don’t celebrate it get over-saturated with these images and messages. It is important to offer space in our classrooms where they can breathe and have a space to share and cherish their family traditions and celebrations. Yes, this can also be done in Spanish class! I know that many of us love teaching the Burrito Sabanero song by Juanes, and I am not saying that we should stop singing those songs, but as educators, we should acknowledge other spiritualities and beliefs in our language classes too, especially in the context of such a diverse country like the United States.
Learning for Justice is a wonderful resource to use and incorporate when creating lessons for our classes. Their Social Justice Standardsare a must-see/use resource that provides a solid grounding for anti-bias education at every level. These standards provide a common language for schools to use. The standards are divided into four domains: Identity, Diversity, Justice, and Action.
I had the opportunity to dive deep into these standards during the summer when I participated in a group to rethink the social studies curriculum of the school where I currently teach. I saw that these standards work great for world language educators and, in fact, many Spanish teachers are already using them. With that in mind, I created a resource to use around this time of the year. It is also based on an experience I had last year with a student who was the only Jewish student in my first-grade class (read post here). I can’t let my own joy for Christmas sideline my students’ identities and needs.
All educators know that teaching this year is different, and since I am not seeing many of my students because they are working on asynchronous lessons, we will miss having these conversations. Hopefully, next year will be different, and I will be able to update this post. For now, I will send a short video of me talking in English and Spanish about family celebrations and assigning the activity below on Seesaw for my students to complete. Better times will come!
I teach at an Episcopal school that acknowledges and accepts religious differences and I am so grateful that the school provides space for students to share those differences. But because it is Episcopal, around this time of the year all the Christmas decorations fill the walls and the rehearsals of songs for the seasons start too. This is something that also happens in Spanish class since during the last week of December we take a moment to gather around a big Christmas tree to sing villancicos.
This year I have a new student who is Jewish, and I appreciate that when we started singing Christmas songs he shared with me that he practices a different religion. I told him that it was his choice to stay in the group or find a “safe” space in the room when he needed it. His choice has been to stay in the group. Thinking about him, I went to my school library to find some books, but all the titles were in English. I chose asimple picture book that I could still connect with Spanish. He was surprised to see the book in my classroom and even more when I taught the song“Ocho Kandelikas”.
