After creating unique children’s stories, 27 high school juniors in Andromache Agramonte’s Spanish classes recently volunteered to spend the day at Drexel Avenue Elementary School in Westbury to work with five bilingual Spanish classes from grades 1, 2 and 3, reading the stories to the younger students.

The high schoolers worked in groups, visiting two different bilingual classes where they read their stories in both Spanish and English, accompanying them with puppets and projects. The young “Drexilites” were excited and engaged to have a new and different group of teachers for the day.

Some projects involved creating boats with blocks using different criteria such as color and shape to bring to life a story about a small boy who builds a cardboard boat to visit an imaginary island. Paper fire trucks in different shapes helped to animate a story about a boy who shares his new fire truck with a lonely student on the school bus, while Mexican tissue paper flowers recreated a scene from a story about a small girl who goes camping and enjoys nature.

“Working with students much younger than they energized these high school students and empowered the younger bilingual students, who felt great being able to explain the stories and projects in both languages,” said Agramonte. “It was a day full of language, culture, sharing and laughter.”

“We all definitely want to go back,” said West Islip student Gabby Nicolosi.