Honoring Hispanic Heritage with Interdisciplinary Study

Fifth grade students marked Hispanic Heritage Month with an interdisciplinary study of the indigenous Mesoamerican culture of the Aztec Empire.

Spanish teacher Karen Liszka and Art teacher Kay Silva joined forces in co-teaching a series of classes to help students learn more about Mesoamerica and the ancient Aztecs. To guide this study, teachers have been leading students in seeing, thinking and wondering about the concepts of culture and heritage, as well as how we all “float on the wings” of our ancestors today. 

With the understanding that one can view heritage through a lens of historical culture, Spanish-class students created storyboard graphics to highlight aspects of religion, architecture, art, economy, government, sports, leisure, gender roles and education in Aztec culture. They added each storyboard to a giant learning web display to educate the community. In Art class, students drew graphic Aztec calendar symbols and learned the word for each of those symbols in English, Spanish and Nahuatl (the indigenous Aztec language). Each student added their symbol to an adjoining display as a “feather” in a headdress of a pre-existing painting created last year by Lyric Nelson ’24. The result is “On the Wings of Our Ancestors,” a traffic-stopping dual display in the Kupcinet Gallery for the community to share and learn from.

In both Art and Spanish, students will continue to study the Aztec Empire as they compare and contrast the ancient indigenous Mesoamerican culture to the ancient European cultures they will encounter in their homeroom Central Topic studies throughout the year.

Click here to see photos of this project.