Sociedad Honoraria Hispánica

Chapter Sponsor

The job of a chapter sponsor can fill as much or as little of your time as you wish to devote to it, but a few things are absolutely necessary. Every sponsor must be a current member of the AATSP, the organization that sponsors the SHH. An application for membership may be obtained from the AATSP website www.aatsp.org Dues are for the calendar year and expire on December 31 of every year. In October you will receive a reminder that your fees for the following year are due. If you want your students to participate in the National Spanish Examinations, they request that your dues be paid by November 1, but otherwise, you can pay AATSP dues at any time of the year. The best reason for paying them when the notice arrives is so that when you want to charter your chapter or order your certificates for your yearly induction, we do not have to tell you that we are unable to grant your charter or fill your order until you pay your AATSP dues. That is the most frequent reason for orders being delayed, from a couple of days to literally months when the teacher or the school fails to pay the yearly dues.

Once you have an AATSP number and your dues are current, you are ready to charter your chapter, if you do not already have one. A charter application is available from the Sociedad website www.sociedadhonorariahispanica.org  No two chapters in any state can have the same name, so it is necessary to give us 8 choices for the name of your chapter. In states with large numbers of SHH chapters, names such as Don Quixote, Cervantes, Gabriel García Márquez, and the like, are already taken. You will have to be more creative in choosing a name. Rarely do we have to request a second set of names, but it does happen on occasion.

Once you have received your charter, you are ready to get your chapter up and running. It is best to start with a set of Bylaws for your school. They may not contradict the National Bylaws, which you can also find on our website. They need to be more specific in some areas than the National Bylaws. There is also a sample set of Chapter Bylaws on the website that you are welcome to use as a model. You may make them exactly like the ones on the website or tailor them to the special needs of your school. All we ask is that you keep the standards high, since this is an honor society. Many sponsors use the National Honor Society guidelines to determine the requirements for their SHH chapter.

In the past, eligibility for membership was determined solely by grades, but recently many sponsors have been requiring a certain number of hours of community service using Spanish in addition to the grade requirement. That is something you have to decide. If you require the community service, be sure that there are an ample number of ways in which the students can fulfill the requirement.

Once you have determined who is eligible to be inducted, you should get the students together to choose or elect the officers. See the National Bylaws regarding who can hold office. Once you have the officers in place, you can begin to plan the induction ceremony. It can be something as simple as an after school ceremony in the classroom, in which the students recite the oath and you serve punch and cookies, or it can be an elaborate evening ceremony held in a small theatre or auditorium of the school or at a restaurant. You might invite the parents, the department chairperson, the principal and/or the superintendent, some members of the school board and some prominent members of the Hispanic community. Often there is entertainment provided by the students themselves or some members of the band or orchestra of the school. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to get the students involved in the planning and executing of the ceremony, so that the burden of putting it together does not fall completely on you.

When the ceremony is over, you will have completed the minimum requirements of your sponsorship of the SHH chapter in your school. From here on, anything else you choose to do will increase the involvement of the students and the visibility of your chapter in the school and the community. The amount of work you do will be dependent on how responsible and willing the students in your chapter are to accept responsibility and carry through on what they have started.

The easiest things to do are to encourage your students to send in poetry, prose or graphics pertaining to the Hispanic world for publication in our literary magazine, ¡Albricias!. Every active chapter receives a copy of the magazine, which is published quarterly. Every student whose work is accepted gets a check for $35 ($50, if the drawing is chosen for the cover) and a copy of the magazine in which the work appears.

We also have two very important contests each year for students. The first is the Bertie Green Junior Travel Award, which sends 20 juniors to Mexico, Costa Rica or Spain during the summer for 10-12 days. Each chapter may choose one student to apply for the award. The application for the award is published in our Becas y Premios packet, which is sent to each chapter sponsor during the month of December. Applications for the awards are due on February 15 of each year.

The second award is the Joseph S. Adams Senior Scholarship Award, received by graduating seniors each year. Twelve awards of $2,000 each and 40 of $1,000 are given to 52 seniors. As in the case of the Junior Travel Awards, each chapter may choose one candidate to apply. The application can also be found in the Becas y Premios packet.

There are innumerable projects that your students can get involved in, from something as simple as tutoring lower level Spanish students who are having trouble with the language to something as complex as planning a Spanish immersion day or weekend at your school and inviting other schools to participate. For the very active and creative chapters we also have two contests. They are the Activity of the Year and the Chapter of the Year. We award up to three cash prizes ($100, $75 and $50) for the best short-term and long-term activities submitted to the committee each year. We also award $150 and a plaque to up to five chapters for their over-all efforts during the year to be involved with the study of Spanish, promote it in their communities and participate in activities that help their own community and the Hispanic world in general. Applications for these awards appear in the Becas y Premios packet.

If you have difficulty in thinking up projects for your students to participate in, some have been written up in the Sponsor’s Handbook, which the sponsor of every newly chartered chapter receives. Also, each year, in one of the editions of ¡Albricias!, all the activities of the winners of the above mentioned awards are written up, so you can get some inspiration from reading about what other chapters have done.

Finally, we also have two awards for Chapter Sponsors. A sponsor who has given exemplary service to the SHH is eligible for the Mario Fierros Award, which pays the airfare, hotel and $50.00 per diem for the days of the conference for the winner to attend the annual AATSP conference in the year in which (s)he is chosen the winner. If a sponsor becomes a State Director at some time, (s)he can also apply for the John Temple State Director of the Year. This award also pays the airfare, hotel and $50.00 per diem for the days of the conference for the SD to attend the annual AATSP conference in the year in which (s)he is chosen State Director of the Year.