Skip to main content

A weekend of sport and culture


4 November 2019

Well, it’s been a very cultural experience for me over the weekend. First on Saturday I attended a Homecoming Football match between the University of Arizona Wildcats and the Oregon State University team. It was a very interesting spectacle with a huge brass band, cheerleaders and ceremonies to honour military service people, first responders and university staff at many times during the game. The Cats lost, but had some moments of brilliance, and it was a  very rich experience for me. Even before we got into the stadium, the university was filled with tents for every department, welcoming alumni who were visiting for homecoming. 

Then on Sunday, quite a different experience when I was invited to attend the All Souls Procession, a community event to remember those who have died.  I had my face painted and  joined in with a colleague to have dinner with friends. There was a mixture of emotions during the procession: It was very moving to see people in the procession carrying pictures of their deceased loved ones, and there was also energetic drumming, dancing and sensational costumes. I was very lucky to be there. During the procession, paper notes and pencils were handed out on which you could write messages to your own departed loved ones, and these were then burned in a huge steel spherical vessel which was lifted into the sky on a crane- quite a spectacle.

The university campus here has so many facilities, facilities which would be municipal in NZ cities- a huge football stadium, a track and field arena, an aquatic centre, a basketball stadium; tennis courts and more. Some of the cultural facilities include the Center for CreativePhotography; the Poetry Center ; Centennial Hall and Arizona State Museum. These are all places I hope to visit in my weekends over the next four months. I won’t be bored, that’s for sure.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NCTE Day 2: Native American authors and publishing

Today at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference I went to some really interesting sessions, including a panel of female authors in the evening, including Newbery medal winner Megan Medina who chaired a session of three young female authors, including Brittany Luby, a Canadian writer of Anishinaabe-kwe heritage whose recent picturebook, Encounter , is about a first contact between an indigenous boy and a French boy on a sailing ship. I met Brittany after the session and was interested to hear more about her next book which will be bilingual. This linked to another session I had attended earlier in the day with four Native American authors entitled ‘Bringing indigenous voices into your classroom’. The chair of the panel was not American Indian, but a teacher who works in a school with Native American children. She began by quoting the data on books by and about people of colour and from First/Native Nations published for children and teens compiled ...
Post a Comment
Read more

End of Week 2

At the end of my second week at the University of Arizona, I am starting to settle in. I now have a staff ID number and a Staff ID card which has allowed me email, library and internet access, and I have joined the university recreation centre where I am able to swim and attend yoga classes.  I am really enjoying these facilities! While here I have the opportunity to sit in on a couple of courses. I have already mentioned the one called the   Critical Content Analysis of Text and Image. This last week we used some of the techniques we’ve learned to examine some of the books in the U.S. IBBY Outstanding International Book Awards. This award has been awarded since 2006 in an effort to encourage US publishers to publish books published outside the United States, thus allowing US children to develop global awareness. One of my favourites from last week comes from Tara Press in India. It’s called   Hope is a GirlSelling Fruit by Amriti Das.  Not only is the art ...
Post a Comment
Read more

JoLLE Winter Conference and Atlanta Georgia

One of the highlights of my Fulbright has been the people I’ve met, and the opportunities to present in a variety of settings. I recently attended the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia to present a workshop about bilingual picturebooks as part of the JoLLE (Journal of Language and Literacy Education) Winter conference.  I focused on Māori-English bilingual picturebooks and the participants engaged well. My host while there was Dr. Petros Panaou who took this photo in which I look like I’m talking to Captain Cook as I gave a short history of Aotearoa New Zealand  prior to looking at the picturebooks.   The next day I had the great pleasure of attending a plenary given by Dr. April Baker-Bell (Michigan State University) talking about her framework of an Anti-Racist Black Language Pedagogy. It was inspiring. On the Sunday I was leaving from Atlanta, and Petros and his family took me to do some sightseeing before I left. We visited the National Park dedica...
Post a Comment
Read more