For most students, high school classes aren’t all that memorable: Drills, lectures, tests, and discussions tend to blend together.
But then there are those few periods you aren’t likely to forget.
Take, for example, one day last spring in a Spanish 2 class taught by former teacher Allison Dermont. Students were given a year-long goal to “earn letters” that eventually spell out “F-I-E-S-T-A,” the Spanish word for party. When the class gained all six letters, they were promised a party — or for high schoolers, a non-work, chill, fun period.
To gain a letter, the class had to earn 10 points, with each point given after a minute of conversation in Spanish. If Dermont heard any English, the point wouldn’t count.
In the end, my class was able to conquer this challenge — and it was worth it. Getting a whole 90 minutes of fun activities was all a student could ask for.
The fiesta wasn’t just a regular free period. There were cakes and desserts to share. Dermont brought in frisbees, footballs, spikeball and many other fun activities.
A few students got a frisbee stuck in a tree, making the fiesta even more exciting. As people tried to see what they could do to get the frisbee down, they threw big rubber balls, footballs, spikeballs and frisbees to try to knock it down. Expectedly, another item, a spikeball, got stuck in the tree too, with a total of two items to mourn.
As this incident slowly slipped to the back of everybody’s minds, they resumed their other activities while chatting.
There were often times where people would hit the spikeball too hard, and it would bounce far far away, thus causing players to run a lot during the game. One student said, “This isn’t P.E. class; why am I running so much?”
Other times the people sitting under the tree would get disturbed. Whether it was a football, spikeball or frisbee, conversations would be interrupted because of terrible aiming or catching from the players.
Soon enough, it was time for everyone to walk back to the classroom and prepare for the period to end. Because of the high energy and joy of the class, the 90 minutes passed quickly. This fiesta was a great end of the day to the week. This memorable fiesta left smiles on everyone’s faces as they got ready to go home.
