The beginning of the school year and the fall are the most school spirit-packed couple of months in the year. This includes the Fright Night Dance, the Halloween spike ball tournament, spirit week, and the Thanksgiving football game. By far the most stressful yet rewarding event is Spirit Week. Packed into the fastest week of the year are events such as the food drive, garbage pick up, penny count, themed outfit days, powder puff game, scavenger hunt, hallway decorating, tug of war, volleyball, and more.
To find out more about student’s opinions on this hectic week, we sent out a survey for high schoolers and asked them for their opinions. Many respondents said they enjoyed Spirit Week because it brings the class together. About 35% of respondents said they were excited about hallway decorating the most. In addition to these positive responses, there were negative comments as well. In response to our question, “Are there any issues with the way Spirit Week is organized or carried out that should be known to administrators?”, Daniel Sparks wrote, “There should be more effort to have teachers not assign large amounts of homework. Delegates and officers (which make up a fourth of my class I think) devote so much time during spirit week and with sports and other clubs on top, it really leaves little time to focus on homework”. As seniors ourselves, I agree with Sparks in the fact that Spirit Week may be one of the most stressful weeks of the year due to back-to-back activities leaving absolutely no free time whatsoever. On top of his concerns about schoolwork, Sparks adds, “Spirit week is such a great opportunity for people to make new friends and branch out, It’s really sad to see people not able to do that bc of homework… To summarize, I guess, we need more communication between studco and teachers”.
Sparks was not the only student who thought this way, 66% of respondents found issues with the communication between these two. Others found issues with the lack of participation in events, the lack of explanation on event details (mainly for underclassmen who have not done any events before), and issues with some specific things. These included the fact that people cannot see or hear the DAC video in the B gym, and that dress up days should count for more points. Many students including ourselves love Spirit Week and always will, but there are still certain flaws that could be edited to make for a more enjoyable experience.
