As the new school year commences, the student-led group, Warriors of the World (WOTW) heavily establishes its presence in the NC community. Organized by magnet senior Allison Castaneda, WOTW strives to place a spotlight on students of various cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Although magnet alumni Ruth Luulay created WOTW toward the tail end of the 2021-2022 school year, it recently gained greater recognition. The NC magnet program steadily focuses on international studies, resulting in WOTW targeting magnet students. However, it quickly expanded beyond the magnet program as a massive quantity of the NC population do not identify as magnet students but proudly embrace their heritage nonetheless. Not only does the group enforce inclusion within the school, but it upholds NC’s reputation ranking as the 5th diverse school in the county. 

“Since we are a very diverse school, we wanted to incorporate non-magnet kids as well because originally it was started by Coach Auld, our magnet coordinator and Ruth, who is a magnet kid. We interview people from NC who come from culturally diverse backgrounds and get to highlight them. Last year, we didn’t have a schedule, so there wasn’t that much posted; but now we have a team working on it and our goal is to post weekly,” Castaneda said. 

Every week, a WOTW member conducts an interview with an NC student regarding their ethnic background. After transcribing the audio from the interview and forming quotes, Castaneda posts a picture of the scholar and their quotes on the bulletin board located at the main entrance of the school as well as on the NC magnet Instagram page. This process allows the warrior to receive individual recognition and fosters a learning experience for others. 

“As an international magnet program, we always try to bring value and add something to not just our students, but the entire community and high school so we thought it would be great to have a student-led group who could interview and highlight that diversity and showcase. During the pandemic, there was very little we could do to travel, so I figured that we don’t need to go anywhere to learn about international studies when we have international studies right in our ranks. I sent the first one that we did to all staff members and explained what we were doing, and then asked them for nominations of students that we may not know about who are very unique or tied to different cultures,” magnet coordinator James Auld said. 

As a Mexican-American woman herself, Castaneda graciously accepted the role as the organizer of the group when offered to her. Ideally, she will set goals to lead the group to a bright future and WOTW will succeed beyond her years as an NC student. 

“Coach Auld is the one who offered me the position if I remember correctly, which I was surprised by honestly. I really took honor because I actually took a class with Ruth, but I didn’t know she ran it. I would see the posts on Instagram and think ‘This is so cool, I didn’t know this about some people.’ I really love posting about people and displaying the diversity at NC. I have teachers and admin reaching out to me about students who are interested in being a part of it, so I just think it’s really cool how we’re all coming together,” Castaneda said.