Cultural Celebrations

One of my goals as a Hispanic and an Instructor of Spanish is to teach my students about authentic cultural celebrations, customs, folklore, history, literature, traditions, etc. In a Spanish language course, it is extremely important to debunk false dialectal, ethnic and racial stereotypes. For that reason, not only students will learn about the use of two last names by Hispanics, but we will be also celebrating some of the most important festivities in the Hispanic world.

Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15th-October 15)

During these thirty days on which we celebrate the contributions of famous Hispanics and Latino/a people to the US, we will be reading the following books and creating some baseball cards with the biographical information of the protagonists:

• Mónica Brown and Rafael López's Tito Puente, Mambo King.
• Álex Rodríguez's Out of the Ballpark.
• Julia Finley Mosca's The Astronaut with A Song for the Stars: The Story of Dr. Ellen Ochoa.
• Jonah Winter and Edel Rodríguez's Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx.
• Mónica Brown and Joe Cepeda's Side by Side: The Story of Dolores Huerta and Cêsar Chávez.
• Tracey Kyle’s Pepe and the Parade: A Celebration of Hispanic Heritage.

Each year, I will introduce new books. This month starts close to September 16th (date of the Independence Day of Mexico) and ends a few days after October 12th (Spain's Day of Spanishness, and Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day in the US).

Day of the Saints (November 1st) and Day of the Dead (November 2nd)

For this special family celebration, we will do some crafts and have fun watching some videos and a movie, while the Eighth Graders are on a trip to Washington DC.

• We will decorate coffins, skulls, skeletons, etc.
• I will display a short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlRzfL1BGbI.
• We will watch a movie, either Disney/Pixar Coco or Guillermo del Toro's The Book of Life.
• We will read Janice Levy's I Remember Abuelito: A Day of the Dead Story.