How EEISD Students Are Helping Elsa Turn 100

On March 6, 2027, the City of Elsa will celebrate its 100th birthday at Mario Leal Park — the biggest event in city history. But a celebration that big needs something before the balloons and the barbecue: it needs the stories. It needs someone to sit down with the elders, walk the parks, knock on the doors of the oldest businesses in town, and write it all down before it’s gone.

This summer, ten students from the Edcouch-Elsa Independent School District did exactly that.

Ten students, five teams, one mission

The Elsa100 internship put EEISD students to work as the city’s first-ever centennial content team. Organized into five teams — Team Sizzle and Team Simmer chasing family recipes for the printed Elsa Centennial Cookbook, Team Roots and Team Legacy documenting the city’s first and second fifty years, and Team Compass mapping the parks, murals, schools, and landmarks that make Elsa Elsa — the interns each took on a simple but demanding rhythm: find one real story a day, then turn it into a full package of content the city could share.

The model was built to teach real skills, with each student learning to run an interview, verify a fact, write a blog post, and remix that single story into social posts, a podcast episode, and a short video — the same workflow a professional content creator uses. By the end, they were building a full year of content for their hometown.

Gathering the stories before they disappear

The heart of the internship was the interview. Students started close to home — their own grandparents, tías, and neighbors — and worked outward week by week until they were comfortable walking into any business in town and asking for five minutes and a story.

For the history teams, the stakes were real. The Elsa that only the oldest voices in town still remember — the dirt roads, the packing sheds, the first schools and churches — lives in memory, and memory doesn’t wait. The interns understood that if nobody recorded those voices now, they could be lost for good. So they slowed down, they listened, they wrote quotes word-for-word, and they photographed the old pictures families pulled off their walls.

The cookbook teams were saving something just as fragile: the recipes that never got written down. The tamales made every Christmas from memory, the caldo, the pan dulce — and the stories of who taught them and what they mean. Team Compass, meanwhile, documented the Elsa of right now, building a living map of everything worth celebrating.

Engaged, and hitting the ground running

What stood out most was how quickly the students took ownership. This wasn’t a program where teenagers watched from the sidelines. They learned the discipline behind the craft: check every fact, spell every name right, protect people’s privacy, and never publish anything until it’s true and it’s good. Those are habits that will serve these students long after the centennial confetti is swept up.

Their energy showed up in the community, too.

“I know they enjoyed it and loved it. There was just a lot of continuity and teamwork in getting all set up. So overall, it’s been a great thing for students. And with their cooperation, we continue to hopefully work with them in year three and, you know, the rest is history,” said EEISD instructor Erik Niño.

Made possible by grant funding and district investment

None of this happened by accident. The Elsa100 internship was made possible through grant funding paired with a direct investment from the Edcouch-Elsa Independent School District — a partnership that turned a milestone birthday into a genuine learning opportunity for local students.

That investment did double duty. It gave the City of Elsa a year’s worth of stories, recipes, and community history it could never have gathered on its own. And it gave EEISD students paid, real-world experience in writing, media production, interviewing, and digital storytelling — skills that translate directly into college and careers. The district didn’t just fund a project; it bet on its own students to carry the city’s story.

“Just having that real-world experience with marketing initiatives, with city governance, along with all the tools that this could provide for students to continue learning, so they can use those throughout high school and even in their undergraduate or higher education. So overall, just giving them real-world work experience.”

Our story, our people, our future

As Elsa counts down to March 6, 2027, the work these interns did will show up everywhere — in Facebook posts your family comments “I remember this!” on, in a printed cookbook with a page for the families who built this town, in a map of the places that make Elsa worth celebrating. Ten students spent their summer making sure that when Elsa turns 100, it does so with its stories intact.

They hit the ground running. And Elsa is better for it.