Celebrating Spanish Culture
Spanish Club comes together for Día de los Muertos
Día de los Muertos is a holiday celebrated by many on November 1st and 2nd every year. This year, Battle High School’s Spanish Club celebrated the Day of the Dead at this month’s meeting.
Spanish Club was originally run by former student Faith Wolfhart, but was taken over by senior William Johanning and junior Anna Wright.
“The purpose of Spanish club really is to connect people with culture, we have a lot of Spanish-speaking people in the United States,” Johanning said. “When we have a safe space to learn about culture and celebrate it, it really brings the community together.”
Spanish club is open to everyone at Battle, even if you are not currently enrolled in a Spanish class.
Spanish club is not all about speaking Spanish, but the culture. They only do a little bit of Spanish at the beginning as an icebreaker, but you can choose to answer in Spanish or English.
“A typical meeting is about an hour long, we do a little bit of Spanish, we have a lot of fun. We provide snacks, and sometimes crafts,” Johanning said.
This month’s meeting focused on the celebration of Día de los Muertos, doing activities like decorating sugar skull cookies. They had important parts of Día de los Muertos, like Pan de Muerto, Mexican hot chocolate, and a video about Día de los Muertos.
“Ï’ve learned a lot about Spanish culture, by teaching them in ways you normally don’t see. You go to history class, and it might be briefly touched on, but you come here, and you hear stories about some of the leading historical figures and events that are celebrated.” Allen Edwards
Spanish club is fully student run and organized, but Spanish teacher Amy Jammeh sponsors the club. They meet once a month, in room H105, and are currently working on the Pulsera Project. This project takes a bunch of bracelets made from different Spanish-speaking communities, they then sell these bracelets at different lunches, which the money then goes back to these communities to help them. Projects and activities like this help show the members many different parts of Spanish culture that most people don’t know.
“There are a lot of things that Mexicans and Latin speakers do that we have done a lot in Spanish club, and I think it does represent our culture well,” Sophomore Mario Gomez said.