Celebrating 33 years of Arabic at Shawnee Mission South High School

These articles were originally written by Eli Hemphill, copy editor and Arabic student at SMSHS.

Images shared with permission from Annie Hassan @ustathaannam on Instagram.

Foreign Festivities

Bustling with people, students made their way through the library from table to table throughout the day on Nov. 10, bartering with vendors for henna, hummus and pita, and other goods. The arabic festival, an all day event put on by the Arabic classes and Arabic Honors Society aimed at sharing Arab culture to all, was in full swing.

“We were trying to spread Arab culture through a bunch of fun booths that demonstrate each kind of component of whatever our theme is,” junior Heba Boullaouz said. “This year we had the Souk theme, which is a market. We had a spice booth, tea or clothes, a sewing shop, fun little booths to demonstrate each.” 

The Arabic festival provides a way to share Arab culture with the student body. Along with the Souk theme for this year's festival came bartering. Bartering is a big part of a souk, with prices often being negotiated between the merchant and consumer in the market. Students who attended were given money in the form of dinars–the currency of several Arab nations such as Iraq–and were encouraged to barter for the goods provided at each of the themed booths.

“Everybody who came got five dinars to use to buy goods and services,” senior Eden Wagner said. “We had coffee and food that they could buy, and then also at each station a table was set up, like how a stand would be set up at a market. We had a spice table which was meant to reflect a spice stand. There was an authentic Arab items table which was supposed to represent textiles and carpets and handcrafted items, things like that.”

Behind the scenes, the Arabic festival has many factors that go into making it possible. Arabic students were given tasks such as helping Arabic teacher Annie Hasan–known to Arabic students as Usatha–unpack the items used in the festival and request donations of food or money from local Arab businesses to support the festival. Meanwhile, Hasan acquired a grant to cover some expenses of the festival.

“Our teacher is the one who is behind most of the work,” junior Shaefer Spizman said. “but also the students work behind the scenes too, to make sure there's funding and all sorts of stuff for the festival. Then, when the actual day of the festival rolls around, it's the students who actually put it on. We went to a couple different businesses and restaurants to get some donations for the festival, the students created the decorations for the festival and made sure that they were prepared.”

With all the effort put into the festival from Arabic students and Hasan, the festival gave students a chance to share knowledge about Arab culture to the rest of the student body in an interactive manner. All the preparation came together for the festival, with significant student engagement in the booths, specifically around the henna and cafe areas.

“I thought it was very interesting how it was set up as a market,” sophomore Liam Taylor said. “We exchanged dinars and it was fun how we could bargain and stuff. They did their best to make it authentic and teach us about Arabic culture.”

Eras of Arabic

With the founding of the Center for International Studies in 1991, multiple language programs were created to give students opportunities to gain an edge in the world. Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Arabic were four of those programs, with the Arabic program being taught at South since the disbanding of the CIS. This year is the 33rd anniversary of the Arabic program. The program has seen hundreds of graduates and has gone through plenty of changes over the course of its tenure. Of those 33 years, Annie Hasan has taught the class for 17 of them, overseeing over half of the Arabic program’s history and the majority of its time at South. 

“It was specifically designed to give students a leg up in careers related to global business, or global diplomacy,” Hasan said. “Just more competitive in the global market.” 

Students took a global studies class along with two hours of a language. The program started with Chinese, Japanese, and Russian, with Arabic being added one year later. With its extensive history, the Arabic program is one of the oldest in the nation, undergoing a significant number of changes from its conception to the present day. As of right now, there are five levels of arabic that can be taken, no opportunities to have Arabic for more than one period per day.

“We used to have eight levels of Arabic, and we are now back to five,” Hasan said. “You can no longer double up two hours a day on it. I don't remember when that change happened, maybe 2013. It's officially part of the world language department now and that global studies class is no longer offered in the district. But, I think through the years, it's just changed in many ways, you know, it's still a very competitive language. There's still, I think that the amount of scholarships that are now out for people who pursue Arabic are more plentiful than they've ever been.”

Despite all the changes that the program has experienced over time, from the eight levels of Arabic turning into five, to being separated from the CIS in the 2000s, something have remained consistent. The Arabic program has been hosting its annual festival every year since the CIS started doing showcases for all the language classes, and although one language class after another stopped, Arabic has kept it going every year since.

“I know the Chinese program did it, the Russian program, the Japanese program always had a festival,” Hasan said. “But then that kind of fizzled through time. Chinese stopped, Russian stopped, Japanese stopped. I just never stopped. I carried it on, it's a student favorite so we do it every year. AHS has to have hours of service, and their service has to be linked directly to creating a deeper understanding of Arabic language and culture within their community, and that's just one of the pieces of our school community that is impacted a lot by the festival.”

Biographies:

Eli Hemphill is a junior at Shawnee Mission South. He is in Arabic 3 and has been the copy editor of the Patriot, the SMS newspaper, since august of 2025. He also has experience on yearbook, having been an assistant copy editor on Heritage from August of 2024 through May of 2025. 

Annie Hasan is a teacher of Arabic at Shawnee Mission South High School in Overland Park. SMSD is home to the longest running public school Arabic program in the entire United States! This year, Arabic at SMSD is celebrating 33 years!