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First ever Titan Spanish Camp attracts 45 students across PLCS
Forty-five elementary-age students from across PLCS chose to set aside two days to attend the first-ever Titan Spanish Camp, put on by the PLSHS' Spanish Club.
"This is our first year of camp that exposes students to a new language and new cultures and gets them excited hopefully about learning this in the future, since they won't have the opportunity until they get to the 8th grade," said PLSHS Spanish Teacher Paige Beaty.
Heidi Johnson is a PLSHS junior and the president of Spanish Club.
"I've done a lot with helping set up everything and planning, making schedules, setting up stations, and buying all of the stuff," she explained.
The campers got to experience several different activities during the 2-day camp.
"We've been going to different stations and making crafts, I liked making maracas and the country walk," said Bell Elementary 5th grade student Aila Johnson.
At the craft stations, they made a craft called ojo de dios, painted maracas, and made pinatas.
"Along with that, they were also learning the history behind each craft. They learned about holidays like El Dia de Los Muertos. We even did a country walk where our students over the summer took home tri-fold posters and created 8 different stations for different countries. The children walked around to each station to learn and get a stamp in their passport," Beaty said.
Beaty is very proud of the work her students did as camp counselors.
"It feels really good to see our students singing songs that we have taught them in class in Spanish 1 and 2," Beaty said with a smile.
"It makes me feel like what we do really matters like in the real world, in our community, and in the lives of our students."
PLSHS Senior Aimee Correa was one of the camp counselors.
"I firmly believe we should start teaching Spanish a lot younger, so when the idea of Spanish Camp was proposed to get younger kids excited to start learning or want to learn I thought that was an incredible idea," Aimee Correa said.
Correa offered to do anything she could do to help. She has a special connection with the Spanish language because her father is Puerto Rican. Learning the language helps connect her with her heritage and her Spanish speaking relatives.
"I've spent so much of my life not being able to communicate super well with my dad's side of the family. So when we get to have conversations between ourselves and not another third party translating, it's really an awesome thing," Correa said.
For Aimee, it was important for her brother Roberto to be a part of the camp, so she signed him up.
"I didn't know it was going to be this great, so I was like okay, I guess I'll go if you signed me up," said Roberto Correa, a 6th grader at Trumble Park.
Roberto's lack of enthusiasm was quickly transformed into excitement once he saw what the camp was all about.
"It's been wonderful, I've had a great time learning Spanish with a whole bunch of new people. I've made some friends here and it's really nice."
Beaty said it's been such a fun experience during the first year of camp that they anticipate doing the camp again in the year 2020.