SHA held its first Hispanic heritage month assembly on October 14 and allowed their Hispanic students to perform pieces from their Hispanic culture.

About 4 percent of Springfield’s population is made up of the Latino community and SHA has high percentage of students of Hispanic heritage.

At this event, students with Hispanic backgrounds performed for their fellow scholars and teachers. Some students spoke about their life experiences being Latino and how this event.

“I liked people expressing the Hispanic culture and having fun but as I said in my speech, I never really had a connection to my culture so I was just happy by seeing how happy everyone else was,” said junior Hailey Delgado.

As fun of an event as it was, most people seem to agree, there was a lack of participants who were not Puerto Rican.

Most if not all of the individuals who took part in the event were Puerto Rican and the few that weren’t didn’t have any prominent roles.

“I wished they involved more people from different cultures because as a Puerto Rican myself I would’ve loved to learn more about different people’s stories from different cultures” said Nayeli Irizarry, a freshman who took part in the event.

It was nerve racking for the participants to speak but encouragement from the audience helped them to overcome it.

As the first Hispanic heritage assembly at SHA, the students really stepped up to make it the best they could. Most presentations were done by students and teachers who volunteered. 

“My nerves and excitement took over, and I felt like I could not say a word,” said Karla Vazquez, a teacher who took inspiration from her students and decided to give a last minute presentation.

Many of the participants and viewers hope that the event can be repeated for the future of SHA so that we may continue to keep celebrating the diverse backgrounds of the students and staff. 

The plan going forward is to reach out to the community so that they can be more involved and assist in making the event a success.

This was the first year celebrating the Hispanic Culture with an assembly at SHA and students are looking forward to the years that come.