Students Grade High Exploring Culture, Heritage

Everyone has a history, from our family name to our religious beliefs. Some are not so obvious, and others are well-recognized.

Several Sidney High School students teamed up for a year-long study including a competition at Metro State College in Denver. The Journey Through Our Heritage (JTOH) program is one of the nation's most innovative and unique multi-cultural education programs. The goal of the program is to engage students in a yearlong program that enhances the public school systems, according to the Metro State website. The program's grand finale includes a "knowledge bowl" between participating high schools.

Sidney is the only Nebraska high school to participate in the program, according to Brett Avila, teacher at Sidney High School. SHS was invited to compete in the event by Dr. Renee Fajardo, JTOH coordinator. Avila knows Dr. Fajardo from when he worked in the Denver area.

The competition includes designing a mural, a result of extensive research, and an oral presentation. The theme of Sidney's presentation was family, family tradition and heritage.

"I learned a lot about my family I didn't know," said student Mason Nightingale.

The process includes deciding a theme for the mural, researching it and designing the graphics.

"You can do different competitions," said student Ella Miller.

Murals are judged according to if the student team had a teacher, or did not have a teacher. Sidney scored second among teams with a teacher. On a scale of 100 points, the Sidney team also earned 94 points for their Cultural Expression Power Point presentation.

The mural is a collection of symbolism from nature: sun, wind, clouds and plants, in addition to symbols of religious belief systems.

The research prior to designing the mural required interviewing family with questions like "What foods did you eat on holidays?" "Do you pray?" and "What do you feel pride for?" Students estimated at least 30 hours of interviewing went into researching the mural. Each of the diagrams on the mural are symbolic for something deeper: wind - challenges in life, cloud - storms in life, sun - positive aspects of life, flower - the central person, heart in the tree - the person you are striving to be, and the flame in the flower - importance of passing generation to

generation.

The mural also includes symbolic religious symbols. Religion is a part of all of us, according to the students interviewed recently. All of the religious symbols are the same color and generally the same size, indicating no religion is above another.

The process of researching the mural and the PowerPoint resulted in the students becoming more confident with themselves and comfortable with each other. Some students said they learned that everyone has a story they want people to hear, and a story behind the story.

"It helped me know what it is like putting a project together," said Arya Eledath. "I thought it was very great."