Students Celebrate Diversity With Dance

Scores of Tarzana Elementary schoolchildren gathered Friday for a rhythmic celebration of diversity by performing dances from around the world.

The children, among them Latinos, Asians, Middle Easterners and African Americans, held hands and danced in a circle to the Mexican Hat Dance. Dressed in red, white and green, the girls wore ribbons in their hair and the boys sported mustaches painted on their faces.

Fourth- and fifth-graders performed the Persian Unity Dance, third-graders did the Macarena and the second-graders tested their talents with the Chinese Ribbon Dance. Parents, meanwhile, scurried on the playground’s outskirts to catch their children on film and video.

Nailah Malik sang and danced to a Nigerian welcome song.

Friday’s “Celebration of Diversity” culminated a several-year effort to encourage children of different cultures to get along despite their differences. The mayor’s office honored the school’s conflict managers, a selected group of students who attempt to curb playground spats and instead foster “peace-building.” Because there seems to be few conflicts of late, the children also give out stickers to children who play nicely, said teacher Charlene Warwick, who oversees the program.

“We must celebrate diversity,” she said. “We must recognize that we all have the same goals but we come in every shape or form.”

Betty Petersen said that even though eight languages are spoken by students in her third-grade class, the diversity doesn’t produce conflict. “They really respect each other,” she said.

Marvin Sandoval, a 9-year-old with a hand-painted goatee, admitted he felt “kind of weird” doing the dance, but had fun anyway.