Hughes Springs ISD honors Mexican Heritage Month

Editor’s Note: We will begin to expand the Cass County Sun’s readership to include additional coverage of Avenger and Hugh Springs. Both towns are in Cass County and both are great communities that need coverage. This should both expand the reach of our advertisers and include additional communities to help support our paper. Additionally we have families that stretch into these areas as well and will enjoy the news from the communities.

The Hughes Springs ISD Dia de Los Muertos Day of the Dead Display honoring Mexican Heritage Month that was from Sept. 15 - Oct. 15, 2019.

“We had many different groups from all campus’ participate. Hughes Springs holds a monthly luncheon for our senior citizens. Each month we have a different organization present some of their projects at this event. Our culinary teacher, Mrs. Raegan Rice, and her students cooked a traditional Mexican meal. It consisted of baked chicken with mole sauce, tamales, pinto beans, pan de Muerto, and decorated sugar cookies in the shape and colors of sugar skulls. They also made candy sugar skulls to add to our ‘Ofrenda’,” says Shara Klaus Hughes, Springs ISD, High School Art Teacher.

The junior high art students and their teacher, Robin James-Ostrander, created an Ofrenda with paper mache sugar skulls. They also created a garland of brightly colored tissue paper flowers to adorn our display.

The high school Spanish I teacher, Mrs. Katrina Sutton, had her students create small sugar skulls from tissue paper and made paper “papels” to hang for the display.

She also had several of her students in traditional costumes and had them present to our guests at the luncheon about the symbolism of the day.

The elementary teacher, Mrs. Tresa Bradley, had her fifth-grade students create ponchos, sombreros, and sugar skulls from paper plates.

The high school art teacher, Shara Klaus, and her art classes and art club students took charge of decorating the lobby of the high school auditorium with some traditional and not so traditional artwork based on the theme of Dia de Los Muertos and a traditional Mexican folk art form - Alebrije or if you are familiar with the movie ‘Coco’, spirit animals.

They also built an Ofrenda - which is a place to honor our dearly departed ancestors and families and to celebrate the lives that they led.

“We would like to thank our administration who has been so supportive of this endeavor and we hope to expand on it in the years to come,” says Klaus.