Abstract
This field note documents a transdisciplinary Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos) festival organized at Colegio México, an elementary school, in La colonia El Tapatío, San Pedro Tlaquepaque, Guadalajara, Mexico. The event integrated visual arts through decorative tomb-building and altar construction, literary arts through student-authored calaveritas literarias, and performing arts through dance choreography and theatrical performance, all in connection with social studies content on Mexican cultural heritage. Approximately 30 students across grades 1–6 (ages 6–12) participated as performers, writers, and artists, while parents and community members also actively contributed, including through participation in a theatrical skit, bringing total attendance to approximately 60. This field note describes the pedagogical rationale, step-by-step implementation, assessment rubric, and outcomes of the event, offering a replicable model for arts-integrated cultural education.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Urbina, Mayra and Palafox, Linda Judith
(2026)
"Fiesta de Día de Muertos: Integrating Visual Arts, Literary Arts, Performing Arts, and Cultural Heritage in an Elementary School Celebration,"
The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal:
Vol. 6:
Iss.
1, Article 16.
Available at:
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/steam/vol6/iss1/16
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, Educational Methods Commons, Elementary Education Commons
Author/Artist Bio
Mayra Urbina holds a B.S. in Liberal Arts and is a Master's candidate in Transdisciplinary Analysis at Claremont Graduate University. Her work examines the intersections of law, policy, and the arts, with a focus on how creative practices cross disciplinary boundaries to foster innovative thinking. Her collaboration on this project grew from an appreciation for how educators like Maestra Palafox use the arts to break down silos, nurture imagination, and sustain cultural knowledge in young learners. Linda Judith Palafox holds a Licenciatura en Trabajo Social (B.S.W.), a Licenciatura en Pedagogía (B.Ed.), and a Maestría en Innovación Educativa (M.Ed.). She is an elementary school teacher at Colegio Mexico in Tlaquepaque, Guadalajara, Mexico, where she designs and leads arts-integrated cultural programming for students in grades 1–6.