AMHERST — Walking into the Crocker Farm Elementary School library before Thursday night, students and teachers would be greeted by librarian Waleska Santiago-Centeno, followed by a prominent foundational pole in the middle of the walkway.
In 2024, Santiago-Centeno and her classes decided last year that they wanted to transform the unassuming and rather inconvenient pole into a symbol of who they are. Inspired by lessons about the Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest and the Māori People of New Zealand, they wanted to combine the concepts of totem poles with pepeha, or a way to introduce oneself in Māori. The idea is to acknowledge and honor one’s connection to the land, ancestry, history, other people and events.
To accomplish this goal, 265 students from kindergarten through sixth grade were given a long, paper rectangle strip and were tasked with detailing their lives up until that point. From there, the strips were laminated and grouped by grade and class.
Santiago-Centeno then began placing the strips onto rings, eventually hanging them around the pole, one by one, in layers so that each piece could be found and viewed, eventually creating the library’s own version of a totem pole.
“The pole is foundational,” Santiago-Centeno said. “I want each student to know they are a part of the library and that they belong here.”
Each strip tells a unique story of each student, such as owning a pet tarantula, visiting different vacation destinations or playing video games like Fortnite. However, many strips shared common themes. Most notably, these included depictions of birth — a baby wrapped in a blanket — and drawings of germ-like organisms representing the COVID-19 pandemic.
