For the past eight years, Mineola High School celebrated its extensive diversity and multiple cultures with Multicultural Night. This past March 9 showcased students at the event to relish, enjoy, appreciate and savor the beauty and the rich, colorful heritage within the community.
“Mineola is an extremely diverse, culturally vibrant community,” remarked, Elsa Coelho, the program designer and world language teacher at Mineola High School. “The event celebrates the diversity of the global community we live in. It helps us better understand the multiple races, cultures, beliefs and ideas the world has to offer.”
Multiple types of food from different nations were represented. Local businesses and students prepared chicken gyros, baked ziti, samosas, empanadas, paella, carne a alente-jana, penne a la vodka, and many more in the school cafeteria.
“The crowd speaks for itself every year,” high school principal Ed Escobar said. “It exemplifies the extent of how willing young people and their parents are to come out to support diversity. The different ethnic groups all come together to celebrate this one special night. This impressive turn out shows the spirit of the Mineola school community.”
Manned by friendly student volunteers, they guided and explained the dishes from Portugal, Italy, Uruguay, Spain, India and several other Latin American nations. “It’s all so yummy,” high school junior Catherine Leong. “We get to savor the best of world cuisine all under one roof. My favorite was the penne a la vodka.”
The feast was followed with multicultural performances. For the first time, the internationally-acclaimed Hagen-Kavanagh dance group performed on the school stage. Caitiff Cunningham, a senior, along with Jessica Byrne performed an Irish folk dance. It was a visual treat and the crowd loved it.
The night gave way to International Idol. For the sixth straight year, the Italian club hosted several performances in different languages. Felicia Villa, Kayla Orefice, Missy Dunlop, Nuvia Velasquez, Miguel Velasquez, Ryan Orozco, Katrine Gulinao crooned popular numbers in Italian, French, Spanish, Tagalog and English. Student judges Mackenzie Schnaufer, Gina Koros and Julianna Caruso judged, sister brother duo, Nuvia Velasquez and Miguel who sang the Spanish song “Fuiste Tú” as winners.
This year, as in previous years, there was a special performance. Mineola High School’s own Kieran Molloy rapped a love song in Italian, French, Spanish and English.
Mankiran Kaur gave a scintillating dance performance to upbeat Bollywood India’s Film Industry, music in bright Indian outfit.
Portuguese group, Panambi Vera showcased vibrant dances from Paraguay that included traditional moves, line dancing and a freestyle soccer performance by Frank Gonzalez.
The cultural night concluded with another brilliant Bollywood dance performance by the Narvekar sisters, Maya and Neha. They performed to a mash up of various Indian pop songs. The appreciative crowd rose to their feet and clapped.
“An enchanting evening, which will not be forgotten for a long time,” sophomore Viviana Fererria said.
The Multicultural evening was also to mark and celebrate National Foreign Language Week, which was from March 9-15. Since 1957, every year, normally in and around the first week of March, foreign national language week is celebrated throughout schools across the nation.
The celebration to introduce students to the different languages around the world.
“‘Learn a Foreign Language, Gain a New Perspective’ is the theme this year,” said Kathleen Levin, world language teacher who teaches Spanish at in Mineola. “Taking a foreign language course allows us to see the world from a different angle and learn that we are part of a much bigger and ever-changing world.”
