The Flag Assembly

One of the things I love about St. Richard's is its diversity -- in students of color and also students with international heritage. For the past couple of years they have put on a flag assembly which recognizes and celebrates students who have been born in other countries. Everyone is asked whether or not they want to participate and since this was held the very week after the PK3 Music/French Assembly, it was timely to ask Rachel Claire if she wanted to be on stage again. Her answer was an enthusiastic "Yes! I love to be on stage!" Yikes...those words never would have come out of my mouth.

Mrs. Williams suggested that little kids have a buddy to help them through the process so I talked this through with Rachel Claire and suggested several people who she knows that might be good candidates. Luckily the girl has lots of friends at school (including teachers) so there were a lot of people to choose from. Finally she settled on Myra Miller, another girl who is adopted from China and who is in the 3rd grade. Rachel Claire and Myra have become friends this year and it is really cute to see them together. They hung out in aftercare some and also they eat lunch at the same time.

Myra also has a little sister from China, Vivian, so she was helping two kids that day. Each kid was supposed to say their name, where they were born and something interesting about their country. Rachel Claire and I talked about various things -- including talking about Pandas because we've been reading a book about that -- but she settled on telling everyone what her favorite colors were in Chinese. I tried to practice it with her a bunch because I knew when it came down to it, she was probably going to be a bit scared.

In the end, both Vivian and Rachel Claire (and several other kids) were too scared to talk into the microphone. But Myra was a trooper as the helper of two other little kids and I know Rachel Claire took comfort in being with Myra up there. Once again, could have had better photos with a better camera, but these are at least better than the singing assembly because I snuck up front and sat with the kids for my photo taking. It was quite a sweet assembly and all of the kids did a great job.

Rachel Claire wore her cute little Chinese dress and shoes that we got in Chinatown (San Francisco) and she had her hair up in the cute little braids. She also was next to adorable Rafael Durand, the son of Mrs. Durand who helps in PK 3 several days a week.