On Apr. 16, Jones Asian American Club (AAC) held a joint Field Day with Whitney Young High School AAC at Ping Tom Park. They hosted various games, and fun festivities for students to work together and create connections amongst each other.

This year was the AAC’s first time hosting a collaborative event with another high school for a field day.

“I really wanted to integrate a lot of our affinity clubs throughout the city of Chicago,” said co-president Mary Yoon ´24. “It’s really important that we worked with other clubs and organizations to build community and foster unity among the several organizations that we have.”

Embracing new experiences and meeting new people is what the community focuses on.

“We had a lot of people come in, meet new people, go outside of their comfort zone, we had a lot of activities that were really fun,” said Yoon.

Showing up and showing out is major when it comes to embracing your very own community.

“It did take a lot of planning, we had several meetings with Whitney Young AAC board online. Just coordinating the promotional materials so that we got the word out as much as possible,” said Yoon. “We had around 60 or 70 people come, so it was a huge event,”.

The club’s leadership wanted to make this year count as it is the co-presidents Yoon and Ella Kim ‘24 senior years. 

“I think this year was a major turning point for the club. I think the fact that we had so many collaborations lined up such as International Day that was a huge thing at Jones, and then several opportunities such as Apotek,” said Yoon.

Kim shares her experience within AAC and being president of Apotek (Asian Pacific Islander Tina Lines of Chicago).

“I´m also the president of Apotek , we bring together all the CPS schools and we’re trying to get more suburban schools to share our love for Asian culture and create a stronger community within the students in Chicago that have Asian identity or just really love Asian culture,” said Kim. 

Continuing traditional events to showcase appreciation towards the Asian American community has been prevalent post-COVID.

 “After COVID, we had an annual showcase at Whitney where we had Northside, Whitney Young, Walter Payton, and Lane Tech, all the big CPS schools,” said Kim. “Throughout that we’ve gained a lot of connections with other schools and I think that’s why we’re able to hold this event because we got a lot of connections to Whitney Young through that.” 

Putting the differences aside and working together can be key for the event to be successful.

“Whitney Young is known to be Jones’ rivals, we really want to make a more collaborative environment and mood for both of our schools and AACs,” said Kim “We made teams but instead of Jones against Whitney it would be Jones and Whitney collaborating against other teams, we wanted to create a good relationship and foster more collaborations in the future.” 

There is overall increased collaboration across all affinity groups.

“Our AAC was able to collaborate with BSU for a modern dance, and then with folklorico, which is a traditional Hispanic dance,” said Kim “So I think Jones has created a lot of opportunities for us to collaborate with different committed communities.”

AAC is preparing for upcoming showcases. 

“We have the Night Market coming up in late May, which includes food vendors and performances. This will replicate the Asian market culture, so that´ll be a nice way for us to connect with the schools,” said Kim. “In the future, we´re planning to invite more schools to the field day or continue this tradition to encourage our upcoming board members to explore this collaboration aspect.”