After receiving numerous emails from both students and parents asking to be a sponsor for a new South Asian Club, special education teacher Sheela Patel, deeply considered the possibility. Due to it being her first year on staff when she received these emails, she first wanted to settle down and put this fantastic idea aside for the following year.

“I was still getting my bearings under me so I said, ‘Why don’t I think about this for next year,’” Patel said, “So this year I reached out to Mirandola and then we were able to get the club started right away.”

Hoping to meet every two weeks, Patel and her new club have been trying to lay the foundation for what this new club should look like. First off, they are prioritizing the popularity of this new club. The problem most new clubs have to face is the worrying fact there won’t be many people. However, Patel has a direct strategy to combat this. 

“[The main advertisement for the club] would be word of mouth, We also plan on doing schoology notices and commercials for the announcements so hopefully that’ll be sufficient,” Patel said.

With all of this in mind, Patel believes the new club will take off in popularity.

“The students are very enthusiastic about the club and they have peers that have expressed interest as well,” Patel said. “So I believe that the event we plan on doing will bring in lots of traction.”

The biggest milestones in mind for Patel are security and a sense of community for her students.

 “The students just need some place to talk about culture… and really just feel safe in their school environments… and that’s part of the reason I wanted to be [the sponsor],” Patel said, “I want just to bring awareness that there is an increase in multicultural students at Prospect now and so it’s important for people to be aware of what is going on is people’s lives and what students are facing … it’s really important to have all of that to have a type of community in a school.”

“It’s really just an expression of culture and a lot of the culture clubs are formed because the students feel like they are not represented,” Patel said. “So it’s really just a form of expression so that they can spread that knowledge school-wide.”