Teachers Traci Prather and Rubi Perez are hosting a Festival de Lenguas tomorrow at the Happy State Bank Event Center.
Prather said Perez wanted to host a language festival after attending one she thought could be run better. Prather thought this would be a great opportunity to merge the language programs to create an event that challenges students to further explore the cultures they are studying.

“This is an opportunity for our kids to learn from others and to respect other people’s cultures and the language,” Prather said. “It’s an important thing just to see each other’s arts and to respect each other’s differences and learn a little bit about the language.”
American Sign Language and Spanish programs from Randall, West Plains and Bushland are joining Canyon for the language festival. Students from the four high schools are going to compete in different categories featuring the different types of art from their cultures. Prather said Deaf people love art that represents their culture and their history. She hopes this event will impact the Deaf and Spanish communities in Canyon.
“They are dancing to selections of music, poetry, storytelling and that type of stuff,” Prather said. “Doing things that are cultural to both the Deaf culture and Spanish culture. A couple [of students] made art, deaf people love art because it is very expressive.”
Sophomore Zabien Urteaga is playing ‘La Llorona’ from the movie ‘Coco’ with a small band including juniors Ava Haddock and Avani Chand. Urteaga said he is excited to express the Spanish culture and hopes to place with their performance.
“We played [“La Llorona”] one time just as a run through for a couple of people, so I’m excited to play for a bigger group of people,” Urteaga said.
Junior Seely Henninger said this is an opportunity for the community and other students to come learn about American Sign Language and Spanish cultures from students and he is looking forward to learning about the Spanish language at the festival.
“We’re getting a bunch of the schools together to fellowship, hang out and learn each other’s cultures,” Henninger said. “It’s going to bring the [foreign language student] community together.”
Prather and Perez hope to make this an annual event and invite neighboring school districts including Amarillo in the future.