The Junior Classical League group from Homestead High School won fourth place nationally in publicity at the National Junior Classical League convention July 26-31 at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The Homestead club's publicity chairpersons, Alicia Cuellar and William Ngo, created the publicity items and projects that won the national award. Their work also won first place earlier this year at the Indiana Junior Classical League convention.
The Junior Classical League encourages students in middle school and high school to take interest in and show appreciation for “the language, literature and culture of ancient Greece and Rome and to impart an understanding of the debt of our own culture to that of Classical antiquity,” it says on the national organization's website, www.njcl.org.
Selection of the publicity award is based on students' work to keep people aware of the Latin language and the Junior Classical League organization, a club news release said.
Homestead earned 15,963 publicity points through efforts such as posting JCL banners around the community, developing community-service projects and passing out a variety of information fliers to students and the community, the news release said.
One of the projects Cuellar and Ngo planned involved creating a Roman scarecrow/pumpkin display — and having facilitators on hand in togas — at the annual Zoo Halloween event at the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo. Cuellar and Ngo also planned a mythology story and craft time for children at a local library as well as an event where the club held a coloring contest and presented a mythological play at Barnes and Noble bookstore.
The Homestead club was represented at the convention by Michelle Bonahoom, the current Indiana Junior Classical League president; Rachel Klein; and David Landrigan, the news release said.
At the national convention, students also took part in Olympika events, academic tests, certamen (Latin quiz-bowl), a Roman banquet, oratory contests, graphic arts contests and various colloquia, the news release said.
