At Mariposa Dual Language, something truly special unfolded just in time for Mother’s Day. Every student, from kinder to first grade, worked on a heartwarming project to celebrate the diverse backgrounds that make up the program.
“We have so many students from different backgrounds from El Salvador, Peru, Mexico, Honduras, and America,” Mariposa Dual Language Secretary Esteffany Galan said. “I thought it was a great idea to bring all these recipes together and it would be a fun cookbook with recipes from different places of the world”.
Mariposa staff wanted to keep the result a surprise for moms since it was a Mother’s Day gift. In order to do this, they asked each family to send in a recipe. The reason for the recipe is that the kids needed it for a class project, but they didn’t elaborate on what the class project was. With each family submitting something, the cookbook contains 40 plus recipes.
“I asked for them to include ingredients, instructions, notes, and then we translated every single one,” Galan said.
Galan had a lot of help in this project from a volunteer and their art teacher, Marty Neill. She was also assisted by Yesenia Avalos, a Mariposa Educational Assistant, who worked with Galan to carefully translate each recipe either from English to Spanish or vice versa. This ensured that every family could enjoy each recipe in their preferred language.
“So, we worked on this for about two months, just getting the recipes together,” Galan said. “Yesenia was translating and then at the end I just went through every single recipe and made sure it was translated correctly.”
Then our students put their imaginations to work and designed a unique cover for their family’s cookbook.
Each cookbook is a labor of love and a testament to the rich cultural heritage that comes together within Mariposa’s walls. The cookbook became more than just a collection of recipes, it became a symbol of love and the beauty of our diverse community.
“I feel very excited and happy because we’ve had people from the district come and visit us for Teacher Appreciation Week and they were like ‘We want a copy. This is amazing.’ They were looking through them and I thought that was pretty cool,” Galan said.
She thanks Marty Neill for working on the cookbooks with her. She also thanks Yesenia Avalos for the work in translating the cookbooks. Lastly, she wants to thank the teachers and principal for their support in the project.