English Class Holds Annual Cultural Fair

Conejo Valley Adult School students from around the world celebrated the school’s 14th annual International Fair on Thursday.

Organized and run by students and teachers in the school’s English as a Second Language program, the event filled the school’s auditorium with the sounds, scents and images of more than 20 countries.

Students stacked flags, food, pictures and pottery on tables throughout the room, and many performed songs and dances against the stage backdrop of a medieval castle.

Filemon Morales, 36, a Mexican native and Thousand Oaks resident, said the festival taught him about life in other countries. “It gives us the opportunity to learn about different cultures, different countries and different people,” the two-year student said.

Motioning to a gray stone mortar and pestle filled with homemade salsa, Morales also explained how the event brought him new insight into his own country of birth.

“It teaches you how to use traditional things,” he said, simulating the grinding of the ingredients with his hands. “It also teaches you how people who don’t live in big cities make their food.”

Mahyar Rastakhiz, 22, a Newbury Park resident from Iran, said the event provided an opportunity to dispel myths about his country of birth.

As two other students looked through a photograph book on Iran, Rastakhiz rapidly pointed out that Iran indeed has snow, mountains and seasons.

Rastakhiz also struggled to distance Iranians from the politics of their government. “We can’t judge only on the politics in a country,” he said. “We can never measure people by their politics. They are two separate things.”

One of the day’s more active presentations, a traditional Chinese bamboo dance, underscored students’ willingness to look beyond national differences. Students from China and Taiwan, two countries that have been at odds since 1949, collaborated on the dance.

Conejo Valley teacher Ruth Canfield, an 11-year veteran, said such friendships are common. “They’re crossing barriers between countries,” she said.

But, she added, students at the school also work through generational divides because the school’s six government-funded English language classes are broken down by skill, not age.