So, I had my interview for student teaching this past week at a school about an hour south of here. It was great, and the teacher who I will be working with and I generally agreed on most things...and then we started talking about the winter concert. He told me that they no longer sing ANY holiday music at all at their concert. Now, I agree that the repertoire should not be of any one ethnic or religious background but isn't taking out ALL reference to differences going too far too? Last week we talked about "Color blind teaching" and how treating everyone the same isn't truly treating everyone the same. Shouldn't we embrace the differences in our classroom? Shouldn't we sing both religious and non religous music from all backgrounds? And granted, I know Chanukah is NOT one of Judaism's significant holidays, but in that case, might we consider having a Rosh Hashanah concert at that time of the year? I somehow feel that EMBRACING all backgrounds is more politically correct than ignoring them, and give students a much better sense and appreciation of self and others...