Students celebrate world languages, cultures

By Aastha Patel ‘23

Upper School Chinese students perform at the World Language and Culture Day event.

On Thursday, January 19, the Wardlaw+Hartridge community came together for a celebration of World Language and Culture Day. Students from the Lower, Middle, and Upper School all gathered in the Berry Performing Arts Center to celebrate the diversity of our community through a myriad of performances by the world language students.

Students and faculty of the Spanish, Latin, and Chinese departments have been preparing for World Language Day since as early as the beginning of December. The performances crafted by these departments ranged from skits of ancient Latin tales to the Spanish version of Beauty and The Beast.

To start the event, students from all divisions sang “It’s a Small World” in their respective languages. The harmony of the students symbolized what the following performances were really about: appreciating the world and all its different cultures. Following this, fifth grade Spanish students performed “¿Quién eres? (Who are you?),” which was followed by a multitude of Middle School performances such as “Little Apple” by eighth grade Spanish and “Pygmalion” by seventh grade Latin.

Upper School performances were kicked off with students from Chinese I, II, and IIH singing and dancing to “I Wanna Say Thank You.” Later performances included “Abrazo” by Spanish II H and a solo performance by Anushka Dalal ‘24, who sang “Dos Oruguitas” from the 2021 film Encanto, while playing the ukulele. To wrap it up, Latin III H acted out “Heracles,” a Greek tragedy written by Euripides.

Students and faculty enjoyed the hard work and diligence of their peers, all while connecting with the other levels of the school. As we look back, it is safe to say that World Language Day was a success across the entire community!