For her first year at the Niagara Academy, Spanish teacher Kim Dumond has introduced a new holiday to the students; the Day of the Dead. The Day of the Dead is traditionally celebrated on November 1st and 2nd. The holiday involves family and friends gathering to pay respects and remember friends and family members who have died. Traditions include honoring the deceased using calaveras (skulls), homemade altars, and marigold flowers. Celebrants usually offer favorite foods, beverages or gifts for the deceased. Mrs. Dumond says that sometimes people set up small altars in their home as well. “They set them up year-round for their loved ones. But on the Day of the Dead they usually visit the cemetery and cover the whole plot with flowers".
The classes set up an altar in the hallway outside of class decorated with tributes to their loved ones who have passed and traditionally decorated with skulls and flowers as well. One of her students, Joe, honored his uncle who was a musician by bringing in a photo of his uncle and some offerings. “I brought in drumsticks because he was a drummer, he was a rapper, so you can see his studio in the background of the photo and I brought in Reese’s because he loved candy.” Student Paige says she learned that marigolds are used because of their strong smell. “They believe that brings the spirits back.” The students had fun embracing their Spanish names Jose and Maria as part of the celebration.
Dumond and her students made the masks and skulls they used for the altar. They also baked pan de muerto, bread of the dead to share with their schoolmates and staff. “It is a sweetened soft bread shaped like a bun. It has a skull and teardrop symbol on top,” she explains. Paige says it tastes like oranges because they put orange zest in it. “They dip the bread in a thick Mexican hot chocolate and we made that to share as well,” says Dumond.
On the second day the class culminated their celebration with tamales from scratch. When Dumond was asked if cooking was a passion for her, she said, “I work strongly with an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. I go once or twice a year and I cook with them because they don’t know how to bake. The girls don’t have any skills and there aren’t many jobs available to them. So we are teaching them to bake and make jewelry, how to crochet and sew so that they can sell things. I am really hoping they can open a bakery at some point.”
“For my students I try to incorporate the culture with the language and the life skills and now they know how to use mixers.” They even used the skeletons that she brought in for an impromptu science lesson. “I am old school, laughs Dumond. “I like to incorporate history, art, science, cooking in my lessons. Back when I was in college that is what they taught, across the curriculum. The students learned body part vocabulary from our Day of the Dead skeletons, then drew monsters and wrote about them and talked about nouns, verbs and adjectives and writing a sentence in Spanish. It was wonderful to review the skills they need in their English class.”
“Every day we made announcements at the beginning of the day talking about the holiday,” says Dumond. “I think it is really great they wanted to share what they were learning with the school.” When asked how she thought the school felt about the altar she said she felt the students had a lot of respect for what her classes were doing. “I was so impressed that no one tampered with it. I felt that the students really loved this particular lesson and wanted to participate by sharing special memories and placing them on the altar. Some of them even wrote letters or poems to their loved one or drew pictures. It was really special for many of them.”
Photo Caption: (LtoR) Joe Degenhart, Lenny Printup, Kim Dumond, Paige Beutler, Austin Healy, Darrell Shine and Alex Warfield.