Maria Regina High School student, Ivanna Franco, shares her original work in Spanish with Sacred Heart’s Cirilla Angeles
To celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, the students in Maria Regina High School’s Spanish IV Class recently completed a unique and creative learning project to share and inspire what they know and love about the romance language with kindergarten children.
The 13 students in Maria Regina’s college-level course embarked on their initiative on September 15, the start of the month-long celebration of the heritage, history, traditions, and cultural diversity of Hispanic Americans, by writing original fairy tales and fables in Spanish.
Their goal was to complete the assignments before the month ended, in order to present to an exclusive audience they selected—the children enrolled in Sacred Heart School. The Catholic elementary school has long served as the start of their education for many young women at Maria Regina, the renowned all-girls Catholic high school. Both are based in proximity to each other in Hartsdale.
Maria Regina’s top-performing Spanish language students completed the assignments in time to visit the Sacred Heart children. They sat with, showed and read to them in Spanish what their imaginations conceived, the latest additions in the genre of fairy tales and fables designed to enlighten young minds.
The children discovered the new magical worlds that Maria Regina’s students created in “El Pajaro Especial” (The Special Bird); “Historia de La Chispa Del Alma” (Spark of the Soul); “En El Bosque” (In the Forest) and “El Escape de Las Primas” (Escape of the Cousins)—four of the original works that were presented. Maria Regina’s students illustrated their stories with art provided by Canva.com.
“I was very impressed by what the students created, combining their excellent knowledge of the Spanish language with their remarkable story-telling talents,’’ explained Marcia Viqueira (Class of ’99), Maria Regina Chair, World Language Department. She noted: “It was an inspiring educational experience to witness as the children listened intently and asked questions. Maria Regina’s students clearly accomplished what they set out to do, and they did so in an engaging and fun way.”
Maria Regina’s Principal Maria Carozza-McCaffrey (Class of ’99) added: “The special event at Sacred Heart has to rank as one of the most distinctive and original ways of celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month. Our Spanish IV Class students are to be congratulated for thinking out of the box and creating a highly stimulating educational experience that will hopefully stoke younger minds to pursue further their knowledge about the Spanish language, history, and culture.”
Maria Regina’s Spanish IV students are:
● Adriana Camacho, Yonkers
● Brianna Cruz, Yonkers
● Gennesis Fernández, Yonkers
● Gabriela Ford, Yonkers
● Ivanna Franco, Yonkers
● Nicolle Goncalves, Port Chester
● Elizabeth Hunt, Yonkers
● Ava Magaletti, Yorktown
● Lorenne Mazzarella, Yorktown
● Amaya Mejia, Yonkers
● Serafina Mistal, North Salem
● Valeria Peña Mora, Yonkers
● Haley Uriarte, White Plains
The Maria Regina contingent interacted with an equal number of Sacred Heart students, providing a one-on-one learning experience. They were Cirilla Angeles, Sofia Bragaglia, Abigail Ayertey, Catalina Cabrera de la Cruz, Danna Diaz, Lucas Gomez, Amenze Ikemefuna, Eliana Praison, Priya Parasram, Eliana Saltray, Madeline Reinhold, Gabriel Vitaj and Aiden Vneshta.
Helping to facilitate the session were Sacred Heart’s Martina Vicente, teacher, and Johanna Ford, teacher’s aide, who is also the mother of Gabriela Ford, one of the Spanish IV students.
To learn more, visit www.mariaregina.org.
