Many Cultures, Many Languages, 1 School

While celebrating International Day at New Haven’s Adult Education center in the Hill, Guinea native Moussa Konate showed his peers on a map the West African country he immigrated from last year.

That encouraged his classmates from Spain, Togo, Milan, Brazil, and Burma to point out their home countries, as well.

That was the scene Wednesday at the New Haven Adult Education Center’s International Day and week-long May Multicultural Festival. 

Students and staff celebrated at the center’s 580 Ella T Grasso Blvd. space, shifting from the original plan to celebrate outdoors in the parking lot to celebrating inside due to light rain on Wednesday. The International Day event Wednesday served as a kick-off event for the center’s upcoming week of actives for its Multicultural Festival. The intermittent rain didn’t stop students and staffers from grabbing free ice cream cones from a truck outside. 

The event aimed to highlight the school’s culturally diverse population of students from 83 different countries.

Adult Ed teacher Rohanna Delossantos has spent recent weeks teaching global history in her classroom, and she worked with student leads to host Wednesday’s celebration. 

The school community walked through classrooms that had been restructured into a photo booth, a pop-up art exhibit, and a dance floor with music and a history lesson from DJ Tootskee.

In one classroom, student art was on display from students who are enrolled in the center’s Project Museum course. Project Museum is both a class and community museum run by the New Haven Adult and Continuing Education Center’s high school-credit students. Students’ art was on display Wednesday, and all spring, for a pop-up exhibit entitled ​“Patterns.”

In addition to providing students with relevant daily lessons, Principal Michelle Bonora thanked Delossantos and her students for arranging the celebration. She noted that the center’s student population of 1,600 speaks 24 different languages. 

“Rohanna Delossantos is always creating innovative ways to teach history and encourage our students to get to know their neighborhood, neighbors, and their culture. This facility is more than just a building; it is a place of learning, connection, and empowerment for those who come here to receive their high school diploma or GED, to improve their English, or to obtain their citizenship,” Bonora said in a press release about Wednesday’s event. 

The curated ​“Patterns” exhibit was the third exhibit the high school-credit students have made this year for the course. 

“Everyone has a story, and we want to celebrate it,” Bonora said. 

High school senior Isaiah Hampton helped organize the Multicultural Festival as a student director for the event. 

He said he looks forward to activities planned for later in the week that will invite students to attend school dressed in cultural attire to teach others about their heritage. The center’s English as a Second Language Program will also host a live exhibit of cultural artifacts and art representing students. 

Hampton noted that typically he stays to himself and hasn’t tried leading much, until he took a ​“leap of faith” when he agreed to take on the student-director role for the festival. 

He said that that is one of many reasons why Adult Ed’s high school-credit program has been working out best for him since March, rather than attending Hillhouse High School, as he did in the past. 

Adult Ed has provided him with the motivation to attend school because of the opportunities to lead, he said. Hampton transferred to Adult Ed two months ago with his girlfriend after they each were ​“too tired of the same environment and needed something new.” 

While at Hillhouse, Hampton said, his attendance was on a decline. However, that changed when he was able to change his environment and avoid ​“senioritis” at Adult Ed, he said. 

In an art room, students drew their own patterns on poster paper and added to a collage of sticky notes for an activity tasking them with drawing a different emotion on each paper. 

Hampton explained that the sticky note collage was an idea he wanted to bring to the festival because it gave him and his peers the chance to bond with each other and put themselves out there.

“We all get to share a piece of ourselves no matter how different,” he said. 

High school senior Sahana Hernandez had her ​“Patterns” assignment on display Wednesday in the art exhibit classroom. 

Hernandez started at Adult Ed in March to earn her final four high school credits after transferring from Hill Regional Career Magnet School. While in the Project Museum class, she said, she has enjoyed focusing on different patterns and routines.

On display Wednesday was a photograph of a childhood shirt she was gifted by a family friend that has her name stitched into it.

“No one really pays attention to patterns on clothes anymore, it’s all about brands,” she said. ​“I think the patterns are what give the thing value.”

As students and staff walked into the DJ’s dance room Wednesday, Adult Ed student Lamar Lawrence filmed his peers enjoying the moment so he could later create a commercial for the new Adult Ed building in Newhallville. So far he’s spent the past month gathering footage of Adult Ed happenings.

He added that while he plans to enlist in the military, he’s first begun taking college classes at Gateway. There, he plans to be a photographer or join a culinary program. Through Adult Ed, he’s already earned a ​“serve-safe” alcohol certification.

He concluded that the Wednesday celebration was yet another successful event helping staff and students create deeper bonds.

“Here at this building we will always be a family, and you will always be welcomed,” he said.