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UC Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month

The Upper Campus has come alive with different manners of commemorating Hispanic Heritage Month (HHM). Teachers have set their intention to instruct and inspire their students with lessons, stories, music, food, and even math, as they seek to approximate the innumerable traditions and diversified cultures of Hispanic heritage.

Last year, Ms. Holmberg introduced a meditation on line-drawing of Hispanic characters into her art classes influenced by Diego Rivera. This year, she opted for his multi-faceted counter-point, Frida Kahlo, an inspirational exercise rooted in Mexican art history and an exposition of an alternate point of view within the contemporary genre. In providing choice, students are reviewing different Kahlo pieces to gain insight into the themes with which and manner in which she created her works, drawing ideas and topics from them for their own creations.
 
All Spanish teachers are energizing HHM within their classrooms, enriching their lesson plans and making their doors and walls come alive with Hispanic huzza, lessons having been charged with instruction involving some of the leading figures of its heritage. Within multiple levels of the Spanish program, from Middle School years, into high school and culminating in Advanced Placement classes, the tenets of teaching HHM have been at the forefront of our instructors' plans.
 
In multiple classes and levels, students are doing research on significant contributions to Hispanic culture. Presentations and reports on various figures who have influenced local and world history and current events have occupied the students' attention, as learning the standards of excellence that Hispanics have set in global affairs have been an important part of their lessons this year.
 
Students in AP Spanish have been ruminating over Día de la Raza, Day of the Races, an observance of the impact of Europeans arriving in the Americas. It is in higher-level classes where students can study and discuss the complexities and challenges of colonization, an essential component of understanding the history of the Americas and, as a compliment to history classes, the world.
 
In Middle School Competitive Math, students will soon investigate the underpinnings of Meso-American mathematics, a system based upon the number 20 (vigesimal), not 10 (decimal), and most famously from the Mayans and Aztecs. Coupled with its literal and symbolic annotative system of dots and bars, the exploration of the numbering system will provide an opportunity for our students to solve problems using alternate tools and concepts while gaining a keen insight into a different and sophisticated perspective of understanding numbers and value.
 
Many thanks to all our teachers who have shared their heritage, passion, and experience with our students to make this year's HHM meaningful and memorable, fun, and festive. Thanks also go to the parents of our DEI group, who have festooned both the Lower and Upper Campus with banners highlighting different people important to HHM. Such efforts have complimented student research and classroom projects on both campuses.
Lower School: 11052 Independence Avenue
Middle and Upper School: 20801 Rinaldi Street
Chatsworth, CA 91311  | 818.882.8121
Sierra Canyon School is a private, independent, non-sectarian, co-educational, college preparatory school for students in grades Pre-Kindergarten through 12 located in Chatsworth, California. The highly cosmopolitan campus community is reflective of the Greater Los Angeles area and the world at large. Students are empowered to realize their greatest creative, ethical, intellectual and physical promise through small class sizes, a diverse student-teacher culture and a family-like environment.