The students, faculty and staff of F. K. White Middle School spent  Friday honoring the many cultures that make up the school’s population.

This is the second year that the school has hosted the Art and Culture Fest. The event was inspired by the local cultures — Louisiana, Texas and the indigenous Choctaw and Chitimacha tribes — and global cultures — Germany, France, India, Mexico and Guatemala, to name a few — that exist in the school’s student body.

F. K. White is an English as a Second Language (ESL) hub in Calcasieu Parish, said Allison Marino, F. K. White Choir Director. “We have a lot of students that come in where English is their second language, and we also have students who have grown up here, but they have this rich culture.”

As an ESL school, F.K. White accommodates a population of students that do not speak English as their primary language. These students enrich the school’s culture.

“We were very fortunate to have many different cultures that are represented,” said Marino. “There’s just a rainbow, but everybody is with each other. You don’t see one group separated, we are all together.”

Through the Art and Culture Fest, students are able to interact with and gain a deeper understanding of the food, music, traditions and practices of their cultures. “This was a way for us to show our students the diversity that’s here on campus, and for them to learn a little and share cultures with each other,” she explained. “In some cases, they get to learn about their own.”

Each featured culture had a booth set up outside, adorned with cultural objects, activities and food.

The India table had small bites for the students to try, while the German table had an alphorn (a straight, several foot long alpine horn made of wood) on display.

Not only did these booths represent the humans that are at F. K. White every day, they brought to life cultures that were discussed in their classes. “It really opens our student’s eyes and allows them to look at diversity in a different way,” Marino said.

Craig Marks, Lake Charles City Council, District F, serves as a witness to the evolution of the school’s student population. “I’ve experienced the transition of diversity in schools, because I grew up in this area, and it is great to see the way that things have changed.”

He said that events like Arts and Culture Day are a healthy change of pace for students. “It inspires the kids to give them something to come to school for more than just the books, which can get monotonous at times.”

Nishae Guice, a leader with the school’s parent teacher organization and organizer of the event, agrees. “These events to me are so important, especially with the current climate,” she said. “We have such a diverse student base, and it’s important to see that it’s not just Southwest Louisiana, there is this whole huge world that a lot of our kids don’t get exposed to.”

The festival is centered around art and music. A new addition to the event this year was live music. Students from LaGrange and Barbe high schools visited to bring the energy up at F.K. Alongside them, Colombian and Indigenous dancers stopped by to dance for the students.

There was also an interactive art project in which students painted their hands and stamped their prints onto a tree, signifying the connectivity between the students’ cultures. They plan to laminate and hang this in the school as a reminder.

Marino believes that the intersection between art and cultural understanding is profound. “Music is just a huge part of our lives… when you think of countries, and view yourself as a common person who listens to music, you have automatically identified with every country in the world.”

Art and music is the first point of access to different cultures that people experience, she said. “I view music and the arts as one of the first things that brings us to a culture,” she said. “It’s the first thing that brings us there to then begin to explore what a country has to offer.”

As a choir teacher, she ensures that Incorporated into her curriculum, as she sees music as a “tool that is so enriched in diversity and expressing culture.”

“When my students learn a song in another language, they get so excited to have spoken words that aren’t in English.”

Food trucks were another new addition. Marino said that they made sure to invite trucks that represented the vast amount of cultural food that is available in the area, like Texas barbecue and Boba Tea from Hi—licious Street Kitchen.

“We hope to get bigger and grow every year,” Guice said.

Putting the event together took plenty of worthwhile effort from the PTO and F.K. White faculty, She said. “They stay nights and weekends and they’re putting in their own money and doing things on their own time just to pull all of this stuff together… It’s a lot, and it’s tedious, but it’s not very hard because everyone works together.”

This event was available for every student. The grade levels went one at a time to ensure each student had a chance to explore every booth.

As an incentive, students that made honor or banner rolls for the first three nine—week periods got to spend an extra thirty minutes at the festival, Marino said.

“It’s so good to give them a break, our kids work hard,” said Guice.