By contributing writer Lucia Brown (’28)

Jamesville-Dewitt High School’s Spanish Onondaga Community College level 202 class recently attended La Casita at Syracuse University. But what is La Casita? 

La Casita is the cultural hub at Syracuse University. It is primarily focused on Hispanic and Latino art, culture, and social justice issues. They often host events for the Syracuse and New York community to help promote Hispanic and Latino culture.

This year, J-DHS sent the OCC 202 class to La Casita because the class recently finished a unit on social justice issues. The class attended the Artivism program at La Casita where they learned about social justice issues in both the Latino and Hispanic cultures, as well as other cultures and ethnicities. At the program, students got to pick an issue that was important to them and make a collage about it. You can see these collages in the display case to the left of the library. Linda Slade, a Spanish teacher in the high school said, “We had students who did collages about things like feminism, mental health, or just expressing positivity in general.” 

At La Casita, the students also got a tour of the art exhibition in the museum called Weird Barrio. They learned about the artists who created the pieces. “I wanted our students to be able to see that what they’re learning in class has implications beyond the four walls of the classroom and that they can use their Spanish outside of just during the school day. Mrs. Slade wanted the class to see “that they can communicate with people from a variety of backgrounds, not only from other countries, but also right here in our Syracuse community.” 

“I was so impressed by the quality of the questions that our students asked,” Slade said. “I think overall, it was a valuable experience for them to have.”