Charities Afternoon: The Thanksgiving Challenge!

Part of the Fulbright Experience is to share cultural traditions, in addition to educational experiences. Part of this sharing and exchange process is also meant to culminate in sharing experiences with our school communities once the partners return home. Yesterday was a hole-in-one!

One of the best traditions from America, which is somewhat directly connected to our English ancestors, is the celebration of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in the month of November. It stems from the harsh realities of a New England winter for the Pilgrims and the aid they received from the Native American Indians, specifically the Wampanoag tribe and their adopted brother Squanto. It was a joint celebration of the harvest and the friendship that developed between the Pilgrims, who left England with permission of King James I in search of a place to worship freely and establish their own colony in the New World. They set forth on their way aboard the Mayflower with 102 passengers; in the end only half survived both the journey and the first hard year of settlement. They landed far north of the first settlement in Jamestown, on what is now known as Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and established the first colony known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony and settled in what is now known as Plymouth. Plimouth Plantation, (not a typo, as that is the traditional English spelling) on Cape Cod is a working village which celebrates the original life of the Pilgrims. It also had once served as an Indian settlement. The first Thanksgiving was celebrated on 1621. It was first encouraged to be celebrated nationwide by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 as a way to unify the country. In 1941 it became an official federal holiday. Schools typically have a half holiday on Wednesday afternoon through the entire weekend. Officially known as Thanksgiving Break... please note: I will be working on Thanksgiving Day this year! However, a wonderful family has offered to host a very large Thanksgiving Dinner next week, so I am very much looking forward to it when school is dismissed for the afternoon. Instead of a football game, I will attend a basketball game and then feast on turkey!

This holiday has always been one of my favorite, not the least reason being that I was actually born on a Thanksgiving Thursday! It is fitting, being a native New Englander, that this would be a culturally rich tradition that I would seek to share with students and staff from Fairfield. Not many of these students were familiar with Thanksgiving, so Mel and I decided that we would use "Charities Afternoon" to introduce two house groups of Year 11 students to the experience of feasting on turkey,mashed potatoes, corn, peas, cranberry sauce, gravy, pumpkin pie and apple pie & ice cream! (Usually, people here do not eat turkey until Christmas, but there were af few whole, frozen birds to be found.) The students also watched several videos, courtesy of United Streaming - a resource I have been very happy to have at my disposal on this exchange,as my full bag of tricks is safely abiding in a cabinet in a classroom back home - which taught them about the history of Thanksgiving, the traditions and foods involved from the first Thanksgiving to the present day, and also an animated feature on Squanto and Governor William Bradford. Students also made their own turkey craft and colored cornucopias pictures. It was a pretty fun time. It also was typical of many Thanksgiving dinners - from arguing relatives, food that was gobbled far too quickly in relation to the preparation for such dinner, loud dinner talk, overstuffed bellies, and a giant mess to clean up afterwards! The only thing lacking was a good American football game to watch on the telly!

Charities Afternoon is a tradition at Fairfield. It involves a full day of students wearing their street clothes - no uniforms- but they must pay one pound to have the privilege of doing so. This also raises money for the various charities that benefit from the afternoon activities. For the first time I almost felt like I was in an American high school - with all the kids dressed to match their personalities. After lunch, students are taken off timetable and are put into house groups, by year (form groups) and they are guided by faculty in some fun activity, for which they have raised money from sponsors to be donated to various local charities - hence the name of the day. I like the concept of this day, and it reminded me a bit of the full weekend of activities put together by the National Honor Society at NHS last year when they were raising money and locked in themselves in the field house for the 30 Hour Famine. There was no fasting involved, but it was all in the name of charity.

With the turkeys roasting in the ovens and Mel peeling all the potatoes (sorry about that Mel) - I joined the Fairfield female faculty in a traditional British game of Netball vs Fairfield girls. This is a sport played by only girls in this country. (They don't have any laws here requiring matching girls and boys sports.) It is a game somewhat similar to basketball. It is played 7 on 7 - there are only certain areas of the court (divided into thirds) that certain positions can play in. Only two people on each team are designated as shooters and the nets are about the height of regulation basketball nets, but do not have backboards. It is a fast paced game, as you only have three seconds to pass the ball, no further than one third of the court. There is no dribbling and no running with ball. You are allowed only one step on a pivot foot, or can throw the ball while you are still in the air. Defenders are allowed only to be within one meter of the person with the ball, allowing for room for a person to run in between a defender and a teammate in order to get the ball.

The rain let up, Ellie swept the water off the court and the teams gathered during the lunch hour. The faculty ladies blew the trousers off the girls,with a score of 7-2. Somehow I ended up being a designated shooter, and for a rookie, did not play too badly- scoring 2 of the seven shots. We also played short handed for 1/2 the game, and then recruited an injured Year 10 student to help us out...we still won! It was great fun! It is also a game I would be interested in bringing back to NHS - even if only as a physical education activity, an intramural sport or a spirit day activity- it will be a piece of England to bring home.

I think that the concept of Charities Afternoon would work well back home at NHS, as community service projects are part of the fabric of our school culture - and it is a way to ensure participation by the entire school. There were very few students who could not participate because they had not raised the minimal amount of donations required - which was 3 pounds per student.

It was a really fun afternoon and I enjoyed sharing a bit of home with all the students!