Through the PCDS Fourth Grade Ambassador Program, fourth-grade students develop essential leadership skills and community values. This school year, the Ambassador Program welcomed its newest subsection: the Culture Club.
The Ambassador Program is structured into rotations throughout the school year. Fourth graders get to choose which club they want to join. Then, they must apply for the position and get interviewed.
Director of Community and Culture at PCDS, Dr. Bhagdev, advises the lower school Culture Club. Her role in this club is to assist students in determining what they want to research and how they will present their findings to the Lower, Middle, and Upper schools. During the first semester of the 2025-26 school year, students in the Culture Club knew right away that they wanted to teach PCDS about American Sign Language (ASL).
On Jan. 6, three students from the Culture Club gave presentations on two different countries at the Upper School’s Morning Meeting.
Fourth-grader Avery Hong presented on South Korean culture. Hong covered subjects ranging from South Korean cuisine to K-pop. Two other fourth graders shared highlights about Canadian culture. These students mentioned one of Canada’s famous hockey teams, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and used Canada’s top-produced product, maple syrup, in a pancake-flipping contest. Freshman Sean Weinshel and juniors Reed Ross and Wesley Tarbell all had two minutes to get the most pancake flips. The winner was awarded a bottle of maple syrup. Weinshel took the syrup home.
Most memorably, on Jan. 14, these fourth-grade ambassadors began the performance of “At the Table with Dr. King” with an introduction to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The autonomy aspect of the Ambassador Program is what empowers fourth graders the most. Essentially, they get to choose what they learn about and how. The Culture Club allows these students to define culture by considering how normalcy might look different to others. By researching identities, fourth-grade students learn about their own.
Bhagdev mentions that, above all, “the fourth-grade students love to present to the Upper School.”
