Did you know that every year, a certain organisation holds a couple contests? This association is known as “MaFlA,” or the Massachusetts Foreign Language Association. This might be news to some people, but not Gibbons Staff member, Mrs. Lessard. So, prepare to take a look through the principles and history of MaFLA, with the help of Addison DeCoste.

Mrs. Lessard teaches my Period 5 Spanish class, and was the only teacher to sign up for MaFLA’s foreign language week. Basically among MaFLA’s contests, each time, there is a theme for the contests, as well as specific guidelines and rules. This year the theme was “Celebrate Diversity Through Language” They currently have 4 contests; The Video Contest, The Digital Art Contest, The Essay contest and The Poster Contest. For each contest, teachers get a maximum amount of entries. I believe that you can submit two entries in both the Poster and Digital art contest as well as the Essay contest- though I’m not sure about the video contest. These entries are for ALL class periods, which for my teacher is periods 1-5. We are her biggest class, as well as her only Spanish class. Over the course of the week, she gave us time to work on our submissions. The contests were all optional, but you still could work on a drawing and not submit it. Overall this was a great way to celebrate World Language week and diversity. Just a final FYI, the image above is my entry for the digital art contest, and if you want to check out the process I will make another story including the times lapse.