Students to celebrate Black History with skits

Megan Martinez, Features Editor

This year, Bishop Noll is celebrating Black History month a little differently than in years gone by. In addition to the usual festivities, students approached the administration with the idea to have student driven presentations during SRT that the whole school can enjoy. The presentations include informative skits and information about the different people that have made history.

Senior Christian Williams came up with the idea for the presentations, and approached administrators with it. “I was inspired because I love my history, I love my roots  and I love where I am from and I wanted to share my history and culture with other people who are not so sure about it,” she said.

Once the project was approved, Williams generated interest for other students to get involved as well. “The obstacles that I faced was finding people who were interested in sharing this history to the school , but when I found an amazing group that was interested everything worked out because they were serious and took lead in what they believed in.”

Sophomore Ameer Lawrence is one of the students who got on board with the idea immediately. “I just wanted to be the part that helped people learn and educate everyone on how we can still grow as one. I love talking about strong and powerful black people, so this was just the right project for me to express my knowledge and stories,” he said. “With this project, we wanted to educate everyone on all the different events and people who took part in the same  history and give a little credit back to them.”

Once enough students were involved, they came together to develop ideas for the different skits to perform. “Everyone brought ideas and we narrowed them down as a group and then I took them to Mrs. Pastrick to get approved,” Williams said.

Although the group had support from administrators and each other, they did not go without their own difficulties. “During this process, we faced not having a lot of practice time because other clubs and activities had their spots and times to practice,” Lawrence said, but remained optimistic. “We didn’t have all of the resources we needed for the auditorium to make it a full out play like we wanted to, but we were still able to make the best out of our resources and we just did the best we could.”

With the help of Ms. Karen Fitz and Mr. Michael Carioto, students have begun to help inform their fellow classmates about the real history behind Black History Month. “Our purpose of doing this entire project is to teach and inform everyone about black history and the reason we celebrate it. We just hope that everyone can learn and get something out of at least one of the performances we do,” said Lawrence. “We, as a group, just meet on our own times and did what was necessary to do this project successfully. We stayed calm, did our part, and “made lemonade” like Mrs. Fitz would say.”