The Spanish National Honor Society released the second issue of its semiannual newsletter Pòrtico al mundo hispano this week in an effort to promote Spanish cultural awareness throughout the school.

The newsletter, which translates to “Gateway to the Spanish World,” is available electronically through a link on the Daily Bulletin. This is the first time the newsletter is available only through an electronic format, according to Spanish teacher and Foreign Language Department Chair Abel Olivas, who said that this decision was made to increase readership.

Some of the articles that Olivas highlighted include a review of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor’s memoir My Beloved World, a piece on the nature-based tourism in Latin America, interviews with former Spanish students on internships in Mexico City, and an interview with alumna Shrestha Singh (’08) regarding her service involvement with immigrant communities in Philadelphia.

“It’s a lot of fun to watch the kids use their Spanish outside of the classroom and explore various aspects of Hispanic culture and society through their articles,” Olivas said. “The students working on the Spanish NHS newsletter inspire other language students in all levels of our program.”

The four Spanish teachers, Olivas, Isabel Garcia, Daniela Rozanes, and Diana Moss work with the students throughout the process, from article selection to publication.

“I help with the whole process of editing: we, the teachers, make the corrections,” Rozanes said. “We help guiding the students, selecting the articles that they want to write. We make sure that everything is in proper writing Spanish.”

The students have worked on this issue for over two months. According to Olivas, the article selection process began near the end of January. After the Spanish teachers corrected the students’ articles, the four designers, junior Shivani Gillon and seniors Madeleine Dawson, Nayeon Kim, and Joy Li, consolidated the pieces into a newsletter format.

“This year, our issues have featured more articles about current events in politics, society, and culture and their impact and relationship to Latin and Spanish culture,” editor Vikas Bhetanabhotla (11) said. “In order to widen our reader base, we began to include English translations of articles that we felt could apply to many people at Harker outside the Spanish community as well.”

The newsletter was first published in 2008 and since 2009 has been publishing twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring. The electronic version of the newsletter is available here http://goo.gl/Uv8FU.