2026 Hispanic Heritage Night
On Tuesday evening, our school community gathered for a vibrant Hispanic Heritage Night. Designed through a collaborative effort among students, faculty, and local community members, the event brought our rich, diverse background together for an evening of shared learning, culture, and fun.
The festivities kicked off with a delicious community dinner. Families then explored a variety of interactive rotating and floating stations throughout the building. Attendees whipped up sweet and spicy Mexican-style treat cups at the Make & Take Snack station, played traditional Mexican games like matatena, canicas, and balero, and tried their luck at Lotería (like Bingo).
Guests also enjoyed face painting, a hallway scavenger hunt, a photo booth, and an energetic, Latin-inspired Zumba session in the elementary gym.
The celebration concluded in the high school gym, where students showcased inspiring projects and presentations. A special shoutout to these students who put time and effort into participating in the projects and presentations:
Paulina Alanis
Emilio Alanis
Julisssa Artaega
Gael Artaega
Aaron de la Cruz
Samantha de la Cruz
Isaias Castro
Dayana Gutierrez
Ela Gutierrez
(If we have missed anyone, please understand it was accidental and we will work to get it corrected.)
Thank you to everyone who made this special evening such a success! Putting on a big event like this takes hours of planning and setting up. Inevitably, there will be hiccups, but one powerful lesson we can teach our students is how to reassess and adapt on the fly.
To the teachers and students, and members of the community who worked hard and volunteered their personal time to help with the evening - Thank you! These events would not happen without you!
And to the community and students who showed up, participated and had a good time - Thank you! We hope you had fun and learned something in the process!
A gallery of photos will be available on the Arcola High School Torch's Facebook page.
More to come...
This article will be updated as more information and photos are gathered (by and from students). **
We wanted to share the photos with you as soon as possible, but we will have more when other cameras are returned and we have a chance to go through them. The author "jumped the gun a bit" and posted not knowing there would be more to come.
Photo credits: Daniela Coombe