Coming together High school prepares for Multicultural Festival

Students from different ethnic backgrounds will celebrate their heritage at Dickinson High School’s annual Multicultural Festival.

The daylong event, scheduled for May 24, begins on the school grounds with a small parade of several of the student clubs. After the parade, students will perform traditional dances from their cultures in the auditorium. The school brought in a choreographer to help the students prepare for the performances, according to Doris Fuentes, the school’s vice principal who organized the festival.

A luncheon will be held at the end of the day featuring foods from the different cultures represented.

“Students begin to prepare for the event the beginning of the school year,” Fuentes said. “‘We’ve been doing this for several years and it has become a tradition.”‘

According to Fuentes, the approximate 2,600 students at the high school speak 38 different languages so the festival was something that originated from the students’ backgrounds. The school has over 20 clubs representing Arabic, Indian, African-American, Mexican, Spanish and Italian cultures.

School Principal Robert Donato looks forward to the festival every year. “It’s a great event for the students,” Donato said.

Andres Catana, a junior at the high school, is one of the students involved in the multicultural event. A Mexican-American, he enrolled in Italian classes last year to learn the language of most of his neighbors on his block in downtown Jersey City, he said.

Catana is now a part of the Multicultural Club, which has 50 members, and was recently awarded Outstanding World Language Learner by the city’s Board of Education.

“My Italian teacher recommended me for the award,” he said. “I like being in a diverse environment because it gets me to communicate with people.”

Catana moved to the country when he was in the second grade, and for the first three years he was in school he was part of the English as a Second Language program. During that time, he said, he was committed to learning the English language to succeed academically.

“Learning new languages is not difficult for me,” Catana said. “I want to pursue a career in languages.”