Central Florida Prep celebrates International Day

GOTHA — Students at Central Florida Preparatory School culminated a month of focused study of international cultures with International Night 2015 on Jan. 23.

“Each year, each of our grades chooses a different country to study,” Principal Sandy Graf said. “On the final day, that Friday, we do our International Night. We begin our day with an assembly and have ambassadors that say hello and goodbye in the language of the country. They share crafts, stories or something else about the country and get stamps for passports.”

In the evening, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., family members visited to see displays of their children’s reports, projects and whatever else they did in the month, as well as sample authentic food from each of the countries studied, Graf said.

“On the evening of, the teachers staff them and parents sign up for 30-minute shifts throughout the evening,” she said.

Which countries the students study is largely up to them, but with certain conditions.

“We have a rotation where we cannot study the same country for more than three years— they are then tabled three years,” Graf said. “It depends, honestly. Sometimes, they have students going on vacation to those countries who can learn and bring back items. Sometimes, students can showcase their heritage. I have a teacher who comes from a really tiny country no one had ever heard of before and wanted to tell everyone about it.”

The slogan for this year’s International Night was “We can all be friends.” The countries featured at this year’s event were Belize, Czech Republic, Guatemala, Jamaica, Kuwait, Lichtenstein, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and Syria, each with interesting facts and creations the students presented.

Each year, staff members learn something they did not know, said Graf, who learned from her students that Kuwait is the fourth-richest nation in the world.

This event features not only the diversity of our planet but also the families at Central Florida Preparatory School, Graf said.

“We have a very diverse population of students, a myriad of cultures from around the world, so I think this event is representative of that diversity,” she said. “We’ve done it for 20 years. We’re the only school in the area that does it.”

This night is popular among staff members and parents of students at Central Florida Preparatory School, especially among fathers, who dubbed it their favorite night of the year, Graf said.

It has been for the nearly 20 years of the event at Central Florida Preparatory School, said Lonie Patterson, the administrative and technology assistant and special events coordinator for the school.

Contact Zak Kerr at [email protected].