Whitney High School’s International Day

Living in California, there are many people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds that live here and share their culture. International day is a day that highlights the different cultures present with the help of different foods that are sold and different danes that are performed in front of the student body. Gretchen Whitney High School has their own international day filled with different traditional cultural foods and dances.

Each club on campus sells cultural food for certain amounts of tickets which are 50 cents each. Yet aside from the delicious foods that are served by the clubs, the dances that are performed at the end of the school day are arguably the best part of International Day.

As being a performer in the cultural dances, preparing for it was an amazing feat. The different culture clubs and the different graduating classes compete for first, second, and third place so the pressure is on to choreograph, create formations, teach, and schedule practices in order to present a fun performance for the audience and the judges to enjoy.

With the competitive spirit raging high, many of those who signed up to participate in learning a dance for a certain culture are willing to stay a few hours after school to practice with the new song remix to get the timing correct, the moves sharp, and the transitions smooth.

The students who learned or created choreography and had to teach it to the others who signed up to participate can really feel pressured especially when people who do not know the choreography that well cannot attend practices due to sports or other extracurricular activities because the stress of procrastinating gets to them as the performance day nears.

Many of the dancers participate in more than one dance, so they have to attend multiple practices or split their time to practice for all the dances that they would be performing. They have to be in charge and responsible of their clothes and all the different choreographies that they learned. Yet although “it was a hassle, it was really fun,” said Daisy Chu, a sophomore at Whitney High School who participated in Class of 2020 dances and the cultural dance performed by the Chinese Club.

Many students anticipate International Day for the extended lunch period to buy different cultural foods and especially for the much-anticipated cultural performances held in the campus gym of Whitney High School.

 

Franxine Tamayo, Grade 10

Whitney High School