The ideal holiday season is jam-packed with fun festivities, family gatherings, and filling meals, but this is not true for all families. For those struggling with finances the holiday season can be overwhelming due to the expectations of gifts and gatherings. FHC’s language department acknowledges the struggles of the holidays for families and used the month of December as an opportunity to give, unifying Spartan nation. 

Spanish Teacher, Caitlin Crain, partnered with the guidance office to organize the language department’s annual adopt-a-family event. 

“Mrs. Ahearn [had] the list of students that needed our assistance and what I did is I organized that list… then I put that all on a lovely document, sent it all to the world language teachers, and then everybody [could] see [the] wishlists for [the] students and then [we collected] money,” Crain said. 

The teachers of the world language classes raised awareness for this event in their classrooms and encouraged their students to donate money if possible. Jennifer Miller, the Spanish IV and V teacher, raised the most money in her classes by promoting friendly competition.

“I made it a contest. I told them that my class with the highest total would get doughnuts on the last day before break, and that motivated them, but I think some people were just motivated because they like to make other people’s holidays [a happy experience],” Miller said.

Students like Claudia Gutierrez-Lopez, a French student, took the competition into their own hands and created their own rivalries with other students. 

“[Madame Roznos] talked to the class about it and asked us if we wanted to donate [and she] passed out [a red bucket]. I donated money because I was in competition against [a student] in a different hour,” Gutierrez-Lopez said. 

Although this year’s adopt-a-family proved to be a success, it did not come without a few potholes in the road. In the past year the language department underwent budget cuts and lost teachers, which resulted in less students and teachers to donate to the families in need. Despite these losses, there was not a significant gap in donations compared to years past.

“We have two teachers less because of class cuts… [but] think it’s kind of amazing that we saw we were able to be on par with [donations] in years past [despite having less participants],” Crain said. 

The language department’s annual adopt-a-family has come to a close and this year the total reached $4200.

“I’m incredibly amazed at the generosity of the student body here at Central,” Crain said.