Description: Want to teach global citizenship without boring lectures? Festival studies turn cultural learning into celebration. Real strategies from teachers who've actually done it (mistakes included).
I'll never forget the first time I tried to teach my fifth-graders about Diwali. I'd found this textbook explanation about the "Festival of Lights" and dutifully wrote facts on the board: dates, regions where it's celebrated, basic religious significance. The kids took notes. Some yawned. One asked if it was "like Indian Halloween."
I died a little inside.
Then Maya, one of my students whose family celebrates Diwali, raised her hand and said, "Can I show them?" She pulled out her phone and showed photos of her family's celebration—the rangoli patterns they'd made, the diyas flickering in windows, her cousins in new clothes, the food spread that made everyone in class simultaneously hungry and curious.
Suddenly, twenty-five kids who'd been half-asleep were leaning forward, asking questions, wanting to know everything. Maya spent the next fifteen minutes teaching the class more about Diwali than I could have in a week of lectures. And the questions they asked weren't "what's the date?"—they were "why do you make those patterns?" and "what does it feel like when all the lamps are lit?" and "can you teach us the clay lamp thing?"
That was the day I realized I'd been teaching global citizenship completely wrong.
What Global Citizenship Actually Means (Spoiler: It's Not Just Knowing Capital Cities)
Before we talk about festival studies, let's get clear on what global citizenship actually is. Because for a long time, I thought it meant making sure kids could find countries on a map and maybe knowing a few foreign phrases.
Global citizenship is way bigger than that. It's about helping students understand that they're part of an interconnected world. It's teaching them to appreciate cultural differences while recognizing our shared humanity. It's developing empathy, critical thinking, and the ability to see issues from multiple perspectives.
The UN defines it as education that "aims to empower learners to assume active roles to face and resolve global challenges and to become proactive contributors to a more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and secure world."
Which sounds great in theory but in practice can feel like trying to teach the entire world in 45-minute periods while also covering state standards, managing classroom behavior, and remembering which kid has a nut allergy.
That's where festival studies come in.
Why Festivals Are the Perfect Teaching Tool
Here's what I've learned after using festival studies for five years: festivals are basically cheat codes for teaching global citizenship.
Think about it. Festivals are:
Inherently joyful. Nobody celebrates festivals by sitting quietly and taking notes. They're about music, food, color, movement, community. When you teach through festivals, you're associating learning about other cultures with celebration rather than obligation.
Multisensory. Festivals engage sight (decorations, colors), sound (music, languages), touch (crafts, materials), taste (food—always a winner), and sometimes smell (incense, spices). Multiple entry points mean multiple ways for students to connect.
Story-rich. Every festival has stories behind it—historical events, religious narratives, cultural legends. Stories stick in kids' brains way better than facts.
Participatory. You can't really understand Holi by reading about it. You have to throw some colors around (even if it's just colored chalk on the playground). Experiential learning is powerful learning.
Connected to real people. When you study festivals, you're learning about how real people celebrate, not abstract "cultural facts." It makes the whole world feel less like a geography lesson and more like a place full of interesting neighbors.
Already part of kids' lives. Every student celebrates something, whether it's Christmas, Eid, Lunar New Year, birthdays, or family traditions. They get the concept of celebration, which gives you a bridge to understanding celebrations they haven't experienced.