Threads of Love That Connect Us: A Schoolwide Día de los Muertos Tribute

Lower and Middle School students worked with care and intention to create meaningful artworks in honor of the annual Día de los Muertos celebration, a tradition at GDS set up to honor the deceased with the focus on joyful remembrance. 

Día de los Muertos is celebrated on November 1st and 2nd to honor the continuity between life and death and the memory of deceased loved ones. It began in Mexico, but is now celebrated worldwide, and can include family gatherings, cemetery visits, parades and festivals with figures in brightly colored costumes, along with the creation of altars to honor the deceased. It became a GDS tradition soon after the worldwide pandemic, when the creation of the first altar provided an opportunity for students to discuss and process the heavy subject of death, with the focus more on celebrating the lives of their loved ones than on mourning.

This year the LMS Visual Arts team invited all members of the GDS community who felt moved to participate to bring a photo or personal item of a loved one who has passed and place it on the communal ofrenda or altar.

The team also added a small bookshelf featuring books that illuminate the traditions and cultural significance of Día de los Muertos, offering classes a chance to learn, reflect, and connect more deeply.

In addition to the community altar, the Visual Arts team prepared a special ofrenda in memory of our beloved colleague, Victor Vazquez Vincent, who taught Spanish in the Lower and Middle Schools for nearly two decades. Students in Victor’s Lower School classes read "The Invisible String," a story about an invisible string of love that connects people, and created heartfelt notes and paper hearts to honor him. A basket of paper hearts was also placed at his altar for the wider community to contribute their messages of love and remembrance.

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