The world is filled with beautiful and unique cultures, and people celebrate and share these cultures everywhere around the world, including in school. Many schools hold events where students can showcase their culture and learn about other people’s traditions. These days are called culture days and they’re a great way of encouraging students to be more open to people from different races, and backgrounds and to encourage inclusivity. Granada is a school filled with students from diverse backgrounds and cultures. Granada students proudly represent their cultures through clubs dedicated to specific cultures. Clubs like these include the Asian-American Club, Latino Club, Spanish Club, and the Muslim Student Association (MSA). To celebrate these cultures and encourage students to look into different extracurriculars, a handful of clubs at Granada are planning to hold a culture day event at Granada, to show off the cultures their clubs represent. 

Senior Nubia Pokam, the person organizing the event got the idea for culture day in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd when protests were happening around the country and the people were divided more than ever. In an email, she sent about the event she said she “realized that the root cause of so much division was a lack of exposure, education, and empathy towards other people and cultures. This brought me to the idea of culture day as it incorporated all of these aspects into one event.” The event is going to be showcasing three different clubs, the MSA, the Asian American club, and the African American club, although the African American club is not an official club yet. 

The event itself is going to be in the quad, where each club will set up a booth representing their culture, displaying their traditional clothes and music. There is also a plan to have a Culture Night after school, where families can come out, look at the booths and hopefully see performers that will be hired to perform cultural dances and songs. Nubia’s hope is that even though she’s a senior, culture day will carry on every year and one day expand into culture week, where middle school students can participate too.

“Planning this event has taken a lot of time, consideration, and energy”, said Pokam, “but I do believe it is extremely necessary.”

Granada is lucky to have such a diverse student body willing to share their cultures with the rest of the school. This is a great opportunity for Granada students to open their minds to people from different backgrounds. Culture day will hopefully be taking place in the quad, during lunch on April 19. The organizers of the event are hoping everyone will turn out for the members of these clubs who are working hard to make this important event happen.