CCHS holds Multicultural Night

By BRITTANY FHOLER
Cove Leader-Press

The hallways of Copperas Cove High School featured posters of different countries and continents and cultures as the Spanish National Honors Society and the World Languages Department hosted the inaugural Multicultural Night Thursday evening. 
The theme of the year for foreign language classes across the country is “Celebrate Humanity Through Languages,” according to Lisa Yates, World Language Chair and Spanish teacher. This helped spur the idea for the first-ever multicultural night as well. 
“It started out with an idea from the kids because I’m also the advisor to the Spanish National Honor Society, and the kids really wanted to do something because of all the negativity in the world,” Yates said about the event. “I said ‘Well, it starts with us. We are the world.’” 
Students in the foreign language classes at the high school created a poster to represent the theme, and then it spread from there, Yates said. 
The school’s seven additional Spanish and German language teachers plus an ESL teacher came together to start the project. They reached out to other campus organizations for volunteers as well. Students from CCHS DECA chapter, JROTC, the cheerleaders, and more helped with various things at the multicultural night. 
Each hallway represented a different continent, with information on food, culture and the language. Tables and booths featured different games, crafts, etc., while the cafeteria featured food and dance entertainment.
“This just started as an idea, and it just grew,” Yates said. “The kids, they really just want to unify the campus. With everything that’s going on in the media right now, we have to unify. We’re all people. We’re people first. It doesn’t matter where we come from, what our background is, we’re people.”
Spanish I and II teacher Lakeisha Figueroa supervised the students in charge of South America in the 200 Hallway of the high school. 
“We are celebrating the multiple cultures around the world,” Figueroa said. “It’s very important people understand the diversity, and we have to treat them equally.”
As a campus within a district located next to one of the largest military installations, Copperas Cove High School sees its own diverse group of students, with different cultures. Currently, Copperas Cove ISD students speak up to 34 different languages. 
Figueroa said that she has had several students from different countries and cultures in her Spanish I and Spanish II classes. 
“I teach to my students to respect the property of other cultures, that it’s not the same here in the United States, but we have to show respect for the language, for the culture and the way that they see stuff that we don’t see.”
Students decorated the hallways throughout the high school as well as the cafeteria, with an emphasis on the seven different continents and different countries within each continent and the different languages spoken around the world. Figueroa said that the students focused mainly on the dominant languages- i.e. Mandarin for China, Portuguese for Brazil, etc. 
Senior Victoria Ventura, 18, put together a slideshow and poster board about the Caribbean. Ventura hails from the U.S. Virgin Islands, specifically from St. Thomas. She said that she made friends along the way of researching for and preparing her poster board and slideshow. Being from St. Thomas, Ventura said this brought back some memories, and she definitely missed the food. 
“I think definitely learning about what makes us us [is important],” Ventura said. “I think it’s easy to get caught up in our own thing, and we see the world from our own point of view, but learning about more cultures, you can see definitely a different mindset and stuff.”