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Spanish National Honor Society hosts series of activities for club week
Abel Olivas laughs after two students show their dance routine to the group. Students were able to add their own moves to the dance during the lesson.
January 27, 2016
Spanish Honor Society is raising money for the Sunday Friends Organization this week by hosting activities and selling food after school.
According to their website, the Sunday Friends Organization aims to “empowers families to break the generational cycle of poverty by fostering positive development in children while educating and guiding parents to support their children’s life success.”
Spanish Honor Society members decided to support the organization in order to aid local Latino families that are poor.
This is the first year that the society has organized a club week, and they dedicated the time to support the organization and to spread awareness for Spanish culture at school.
Members of the society sold hot chocolate and churros on Monday in front of Manzanita. They will also sell sweet bread on Thursday. On Friday, they will sell hot chocolate for 5 dollars and churros 3 dollars, and can be charged to the student account.
“It took some time to figure out how we wanted to accurately portray the culture and disseminate it in the most fun and vibrant sort of way,” President Sahana Narayanan (12) said. “Organizing everything and making sure it all came together was tough.”
Students also participated in a salsa lesson hosted by the society in the gym during long lunch on Tuesday.
“It was recommended by Sr. Olivas, and it sounded like a fun opportunity to get more connected with Spanish culture,” Sushant Thyagaraj (10) said.
The event started at 12:30 p.m. during long lunch and a total of 14 students attended the event.
“We hoped to have more folks come,” language department chair of the Upper School Abel Olivas said. “Next year we need to remind folks more, but it was a nice intimate group that had a lot of fun with it. Even some new folks that aren’t even Spanish students came in to dance a little bit.”
Olivas gave a 45-minute lesson on the different techniques and moves used in salsa dancing. In some of his classes, he showed some of the dance techniques and gave students a preview of the salsa lesson.
“We learned all the dance moves in class,” Shekar Ramaswamy (11) said. “We also practiced some of the moves.”
Students danced to “La Vida Es Un Carnival” by Cuban artist Celia Cruz, a salsa song originally released in 1998.
The Spanish National Honor Society also hosted a salsa-eating competition on Wednesday during both lunches. President Sahana coordinated the activity by assigning members to specific jobs and creating Google Docs for them to collaborate.
Olivas praised the work that President Sahana had done to prepare for the week.
“She organized and reminded the Spanish NHS members about what their responsibilities were,” he said. “She has been really fantastic and really proactive [in] motivating the people in the society to carry out the activities.”
The society will host a cultural night on March 11 and will have various performances and also supply Mexican food as dinner for attendees.
They will also release the second issue of Harker’s Spanish magazine “El Portico Al Mundo Hispano” in the near future. It will be written by half of the society’s members.
