Nowruz at ISSD The 33rd Annual Celebration
Preparations for the Nowruz celebration began in late January by practicing the songs and “sorood”. The Omicron variant of Covid-19 had taken over the country after the winter holidays and we didn’t know whether we would be able to have an in-person celebration or if it would be a virtual one, like the year before. We continued practicing. We were even preparing for an outdoor event. But things started to change for the better.
March 6th was the day of preparation for Nowruz. PTA members had set up several stations for the students to color their eggs and take the materials for their sabzeh.
The actual celebration was on March 13th at the auditorium of Del Norte High School. Over 320 parents, grandparents, students, and friends of school along with school staff were present. Many people, however, could not attend due to Covid restrictions.
The program started with students and the audience singing “Ey Iran”. Students’ choir continued with Alefba
and a couple of folk songs. Throughout the program, six beautiful folk dances were performed by the students of our Dance Academy, along with music recitals and poetry. In between the acts, the honor students and the Reading Olympics winners were recognized and received their awards. Every year we dedicate the Nowruz program to a person or a group of people who were instrumental in promoting the Persian language and Iranian culture in the community. This year the program was presented to Ms. Ila Darafshandar, the instructor and choreographer of our Persian dance Academy.
A beautiful Haft-seen that was prepared by Mrs. Roya Amini-khorsandian and set up in the lobby of the auditorium. Traditionally, we auction each item of Haft- seen for fundraising to help to fulfill the school’s financial obligations. From the sale of Haft-seen and the silent auction, we were able to raise over sixteen thousand dollars.
The sound for the event, as in the past, was provided by Julius Nemovi of Excellent Entertainment. The videography and photography was done by Iman Baherbakhsh of Lexur Media. The video is available on the school’s YouTube channel (iranianschoolSD).
Photography Contest (Nowruz Haft-seen)
For our recent school photography contest, we asked students to send us a picture of their haft-seen. We received 22 entries by the deadline. They were all beautiful and we decided to print them all. A few entries were in video format that we could not show here. We sincerely thank the participants and their parents for encouraging and helping the students submit their photographs.
