After studying for months on end, the AP students turn in their tests. While some are anxious about the grade they received, the students that were involved in AP Spanish club know that they were thoroughly prepared and confident in their scores.
The AP Spanish tutoring club, advised by Ms. Reynolds, is a club at Ayala that helps students further prepare for the AP test that is taken towards the end of the year. In this club, students are able to fully embrace Hispanic culture by taking a deep dive in it, and learning many different studying methods so the students can do the best they can on the AP test. The club also runs multiple fundraisers during the school year. They are now in the process of starting a fundraiser for all of the students who took four years of Spanish or made it to AP Spanish, to get a cord for graduation. The chord serves as a symbol of what they worked so hard for for such a long amount of time. Most of the students that are in this club are juniors and seniors.
“We can just divide up each group and each person and use these mnemonics to remember this word in Spanish like you can in English,” Genesse Dimas (12) the founder and president of the AP Spanish tutoring club said. “This sounds like this word in Spanish, or you could just divide each group into different categories to teach them.”
Part of the job for the tutors is to help students retain important information in an organized and engaging way. They do this by using various ways to make the information fun to learn so that the students are prepared as it is important to learn information in different and interesting ways.
“We’re going to try to… focus on the main things that they’re going to ask… because sometimes [the students are] not prepared,” Dimas said. “We’re [also] going to try to make it fun so that [students] can remember.”
When people think of the Latin culture, they generally only think of Mexican culture. Where, in reality, there are so many different rich and diverse cultures who definitely deserve more attention than they are given. In the AP Spanish tutoring club, they explore different Latin cultures so that students can be better informed about cultures different than their own, or even learn more about their own more in depth.
“It’s going to involve informing people about different cultures, not just Mexico itself,” Emily Zavala (12), the Vice President of AP Spanish Tutoring club, said. “ It’s gonna be… any [nation] that is Spanish speaking; it’ll involve their cultures and everything.”
The club members are not the only ones that are learning important skills, but the tutors are learning things of their own. Through their perseverance and dedication in making this club, students are able to learn skills such as hard work, never giving up on dreams, and communication skills that are used to communicate with the club members, officers, and Mrs. Reynolds for the club to stay organized and run smoothly.
“I think the lesson here would be don’t stop something that you want, because if you make it happen, it will happen [and] they have made it happen for them,” Mrs. Claudia Reynolds, the AP Spanish teacher and AP Spanish Tutoring club advisor said. “It’s making it a dream come true, if we wanted to say.”
The AP Spanish tutoring club is a great club for anyone who is currently in AP Spanish and wants to prepare for the AP Spanish test. Through all of the fundraisers, tutoring, and studying, students are learning about various topics in Latin culture that will help them throughout high school and beyond. The biggest thing as well is that through this club, a lot of dreams were coming true which is the thing that matters most.
