Paulina Montaldo

Ursuline High School

Youngstown, Ohio

During the eight years I’ve been teaching Spanish in my area, I noticed a lack of events promoting and educating students on Latin American culture.

With the help of my students , I was able to organize in my first year as a teacher of Ursuline High School in Youngtown, a free arts and culture community festival. It was open to students of Spanish in area schools.

I started to teach my students some dances. They also found dance-based videos on Youtube, and they used those videos to create their own choreography with steps learned online.

Resorted to Latin dance groups in the area and also in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and groups of Andean music and Latin pop. I was fortunate to have volunteer help of all
these groups as I want to spread Latin culture.

I had some clothing for dancing, and presto Mexican Mutual Society beautiful dresses for dancing Mexican Hat Dance and other dances.

To make it even more interesting, I invite you to Cor and Joyce Kester, her former Ursuline student, who lived in Peru and now have an alpaca farm in Pennsylvania.

They traveled with their trailer and installed a corral with two of his winning alpacas, so guests could know them and pet them.

They presented a sample of fabric and wool made from the wool of these alpacas.

The food could not miss. The Mexican restaurant we donated food, and students also helped with food and pop.

Another group of students worked on the decorations making paper flowers and flags decorating with traditional Mexican papel picado. Trifolds sophomores performed with

the information of each of the Spanish

To get an idea of ​​the number of visitors, we ask people to register at the entrance. Not all did but we had an account of 287 people. We had a very good response from the community, but the results and success of our event I confirm the need for an event like this for anyone interested in learning about Latino culture.

The event was a success. Parents and students ended up dancing on stage. It was a family event which made it even more special. Parents teach their children dances with which they grew up in Mexico , Colombia , Chile, Ecuador , Puerto Rico .

The Vindicator , the largest newspaper in Youngstown, titled Spanish Club draws crowd for fiesta and not many days until we received the invitation to dance at events like Cinco de Mayo at Youngstown State University , Festival of the Arts at YSU , cultural performances in churches and other organizations.

And we plan to have our second Festival of the Americas in the spring of next year , which are all Spanish students from various schools in the area invited to participate on
dance or music, or have a good time.