This is one of three stories featuring some Hillsdale School District’s unique initiatives and projects. These projects were presented to Ashland Source on a Monday tour of the middle and high school.
JEROMESVILLE — At Hillsdale High School, some students can recite their alma mater in both English and Spanish.
Students are first taught their school’s three-stanza song as freshmen in Kelly Snow’s English class as part of a long-held tradition — one passed on from another teacher to Snow in late 1990s — and now, many will also learn another version in Scott Griffin’s Spanish classes.
Griffin and an especially small Spanish 3 class (four students) spent a week translating the alma mater into Spanish earlier this year.
“There’s this surge of new school spirit,” Griffin said, pointing to a new principal and potential new school buildings. “It just seemed opportune. It almost seems like I should have done it ten years ago, but it just seemed appropriate this year.”
The translation itself, he explained, was easy. Making the words rhyme and fit appropriately with the music was more of a challenge.
“We had to take meaning of what the alma mater was saying — not the words, but the meaning — extract the meaning, just let it sit and then find Spanish words that expressed that meaning and rhymed.”
The four upper level Spanish students practiced for a short while before teaching the other Spanish classes, too. The entire Spanish department performed it together for the first time at a recent senior citizen’s breakfast.
“I kind of forgot the English version now,” said high school senior, Elizabeth Herte with a laugh.
Her classmate and junior, Mason Myers calls it “weird.” Since it’s sung to the same tune and he knows the English and Spanish versions, it’s “like singing both,” he said.
He and his classmates can recall learning the English version only a few years ago with Ms. Snow, who teaches all her classes to sing both the alma mater and the fight song.
“I say it earns them their falcon wings, they can’t truly be falcons unless they know these songs,” Snow said. “It gives them a sense of community with one another.
“How can you not be spirited when you’re singing the fight song?”
Snow estimates that began teaching the songs in 1998 or 1999. She carried on the tradition from a former English teacher.
“We don’t take up too much of the curriculum doing this,” she said.
She’ll spend one class period teaching the songs, then the students practice for several days afterwards at the beginning of class.
“I think it’s important for the students to learn both,” Snow said.