Every year, upper-level Spanish classes and their teachers organize the Spanish Festival which includes watching students’ projects, eating food influenced by Spanish culture, and enjoying various other activities.
Señora Andrea Tira, Señor Alex Mazzante, and Señora Tammy Morgan have worked together for 15 years to put on the annual Spanish Festival.
The idea formed when Tira, Mazzante, and a few students visited Lock Haven’s Spanish festival and wanted to create their own.
Mazzante has helped plan The Spanish Festival every year since it started. He described it as a student-run project in which upper-level students, Spanish three, Spanish four and AP, showcase their second language skills through videos, skits, and games.
Tira explained that the Spanish Festival is an opportunity for upper-class Spanish students to showcase what they have learned and where they have come from.
Compared to previous years before COVID-19, the Spanish Festival has become a smaller group and both Tira and Mazzante agreed they like the change.
“I like the feel of an exclusive event that the smaller group and LGI offer,” said Mazzante. “It is also great to see that student enthusiasm, creativity, and hard work continue to be dominant themes of all the Spanish Festivals throughout the years.”
Mazzante said he also enjoyed seeing the students’ creative use of Spanish and the special effects in their videos, as well as when students ran activities between the videos such as the Salsa dancing tutorial.
Some of Mazzante’s favorite moments were the monkeys in the Lorax skit, junior Grace Barkauskas playing multiple roles, the unrecognizable Oompa-Loompa, and Kenna Bennett in the red wig.
Although Mazzante was in charge of overseeing the food and Tira was in charge of the other logistics, the festival was mostly student-led.
“It’s nice to be able to sit back and celebrate where everyone is,” said Tira.
Tira said she liked how engaged everyone was with the dance lesson taught by juniors Kenna Bennet and Emily Hamm as well as Grace Barkauskas’s many roles in “The Princess Bride” video.
This year, Tira was out for several days in the week leading up to the festival because of a sick kid and was unable to help students as often compared to other years.
Despite this, Tira said it all went smoothly, everything worked, all the videos were turned in on time and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.
“There was so much creativity this year with the videos,” said Tira. “You could tell good quality and good effort was put into them.”
The top three favorites were the “High School Musical,” “Inside Out: Las Emocionadas,” and the “Princesa Prometida.”
“Without ever having been a part of the Spanish Festival, the contributions were out of this world and Spanish 3 represented themselves really well,” added Tira.
As a Spanish three student, this year was sophomore Rowan Fortin’s first time in the Spanish Festival, and she said she enjoyed watching the videos and seeing the effort the groups put in.
“It was a really fun experience to watch videos, eat food and learn more about Spanish culture,” said Fortin.
Fortin’s group made a video recreating “Wonka.” To prepare, everyone watched the movie, wrote the script, translated songs and planned costumes.
“My favorite part about making the video was just laughing and having fun with it,” said Fortin.
Junior Mylie Herr has participated in the Spanish Festival for two years now. Her project this year was “Inside Out: Las Emocionadas.”
“My group was working on it for five hours one night in order to get it done and we had to coordinate our own outfits which was also really fun,” said Herr. “My favorite activity is probably eating all of the food that everybody makes because it’s always so good,” said Herr.
Senior Lily Fortin has been in the Spanish Festival for three years and has taken Spanish classes for all four years of high school. She is currently taking AP Spanish.
“Being in Spanish for all four years has been great, I’ve learned a lot about the language and culture,” said Fortin.
At the Spanish Festival this year, Lily said she enjoyed watching all of the fun videos groups put together. Fortin’s group made a video based on all three “High School Musical” movies.
“My group spent a lot of time finding the best scenes from the “High School Musical” movies for our video and then recording all of them with dances and the songs,” said Fortin.
Feature Photo: Spanish Honor Society poses for a picture in their matching t-shirts. Spanish Honor Society is offered to all upper-class students for opportunities to learn more about the Spanish language and culture. Photo taken by Tira.
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