It was a great Banned Books Week Celebration here at Simon Sanchez High School. We had the poster contest, road-side wave and Read-Out events. We received colorful and catchy poster designs by our talented students. Thanks to Mr. Canos for promoting the contest to his Art students!
The road-side wave also was great. Despite the rains, the students' spirit was still up to promote our Freedom to Read. Many motorist noticed our signs and even supported our wave by sounding their horns or waving back. It was a great community awareness. We even attracted the media while doing the wave. All 63 students stayed safe the whole time. Thanks to Ms. Vivian Pangelinan, Ms. Aguilar, Mrs. Camat,Mr. Escalona the Close-Up Club and the National Honors Society.
The Read-Out event from Monday thru Friday was also packed with a lot of guest readers from our leaders,teachers, students and the community. We had Superintendent Jon Fernandez open the event with the reading of the
Black Boy. We also had Eloise Sanchez and John Sanchez read enthusiastically to our students. The students were engaged to the readers as they shared their personal reasons of their selections. We also had Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo on Wednesday and Governor Calvo on Friday. Governor Eddie Baza Calvo did his weekly address in the school library. This is the first time that the governor's weekly address was done outside his office. He had the Banned Books Week as his background and our SSHS as his live audience. It was a treat for our students to see the whole process how the Governor does his address. He commended our aggressive efforts on promoting our Freedom of speech and freedom of expression.
Simon Sanchez High School Library would like to thank the Krug Foundation for the grant, Intellectual Freedom Office for all the promotional items for the celebration, our school administrators, especially Mrs. Beth Perez, for working diligently on the Read-Out events, our teachers for promoting the program to their students and our student volunteers - who welcomed our speakers, set-up the snack tables for our speakers and set-up our Read-Out stage. For those I forgot to mention, thank you for making our first Banned Books celebration memorable.
