Even though September is halfway over, Friday signifies the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month: a month dedicated to celebrating the contributions made by individuals of Hispanic heritage to America’s culture and society.

“It’s very important as it is with any culture to spread knowledge, awareness, appreciation,” Spanish teacher Ashli Taquino said. “It allows people to get to know more about the culture with the Hispanic culture in particular. It’s such an actually diverse culture like there’s tons of diversity within the Spanish-speaking countries and I think that’s important to spread too.”

For Spanish teacher Yuridiana Franco, Hispanic Heritage Month allows a time where she can teach students about Hispanic accomplishments in the classroom.

“I do like to implement some bits and pieces of information about Hispanic heritage into my Spanish classes,” Franco said. “Because I do want my students to understand the holiday and also understand why it is placed in within the dates that it is placed because some people don’t know that.”

The celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month is necessary due to the Hispanic representation in America according to sophomore Ana Ortiz.

“Now that we have this representation of a lot of Hispanics in the US nowadays, I think it’s nice to be able to know that where they came from and then we should like to celebrate it because it’s our culture,” Ortiz said.

Not only does Hispanic Heritage Month recognize Hispanic’s past contributions, but it also brings recognition to Hispanics living in the United States.

“I feel like the importance of Hispanic Heritage Month is to build more awareness over people of Hispanic heritage that have made positive contributions to the United States and just all over the world and in general,” Franco said. “There are a lot of ways to learn about some of the people; notable people that have made differences in society, so those are cool things that I like to implement into our class.”