Spanish Club members meet weekly to help students to improve speaking skills and to develop ideas for club activities.

“We do a lot of activities in the bilingual education student organization called, BESO. During our general Spanish Club meetings we try not to speak Spanish at all, because it’s a student organization and we have a new group of officers and new members. The meetings are going to be up to them on how they want to run them,” Sarah Butler, an instructor of spanish, said.

Throughout the year guess speakers come to propose opportunities for Spanish club members, including a speaker from United Way – Volunteer Income Tax Assistants. A program that provides translation and interpretation assistants to Spanish speakers in the community that do not speak English and that need some help filling out their income tax returns.

“She is coming to try and recruit some of our members to be an assistant as volunteer work. This is something we have traditionally helped out with. Then, I’m going to let Justin, our new president, talk to the group and see what ideas they have,” Butler said.

Spanish Club will have different activities set up each week, so members are exposed to different vocabulary words and Spanish culture.

Butler said one thing we have done are tertulias. We do two each semester and that is our conversation group. The first tertulia we had was a dance class and Claudia Montoya taught us a couple of traditional Spanish dances and we had some vocabulary for students who didn’t know how to say two steps to the left and one to the right.

“Last week Claudio Rodriguez held a cooking class for the students on how to make tostadas. On the Oct. 15, we will have another conversation group tertulia, which we are going to be playing Spanish board games.”

The Spanish Club throughout the year offers many of social, community service and culture opportunities, so students can be exposed to more Spanish speakers.

“Spanish Club is involved with Spanish heritage month on campus and in the community. We just got a new slate of officers, we will be introducing those officers to the group and asking them to share what they want to do with Spanish Club this year,” Butler said.