Like the rest of 2020, this year’s Spirit Week will be a little different. While we won’t have our traditional pep rally in the gym, our Pep Club has put their brains together in an attempt to create something equally special.
Originally scheduled for November, Spirit Week will take place later this year. In the meantime, we should be receiving news about some holiday themes we can participate in over the next two weeks. Keep your eyes peeled for the emails in your inbox coming soon!
We reached out to Pep Club Advisor Ms. Erickson to see what it has been like for Pep Club to try to plan activities like Spirit Week amidst a pandemic. Ms. Erickson replied, “Creating a socially distant spirit week is challenging because we have to dig deep to think of fun and engaging ways to get the students and staff involved from afar. We planned to have students send photos and videos to the spirit week email so that students at home could participate, so our plans didn’t really change too much when we found out we were going fully virtual.”
Like all of us, she is grateful that we have Spirit Week “because it is a great way to keep our spirits up and still feel connected while we are away from each other.” While it has been challenging for Pep Club to adjust to this new way of planning, Ms. Erickson shared that she is “so proud of how the members of the pep club have stepped up and really put forth a great effort in planning spirit week and encouraging their fellow classmates to get involved.”
Pep Club members expressed similar aspects in planning for Spirit Week. Jessie Valentine said, “It was very difficult to think of changes to get the student body involved. Thankfully we had a spirit week back in April that helped us work out our kinks for this year. We also have to give a lot of thanks to Ms. Erickson for helping create good ideas to make spirit week happen virtual[ly] and I really hope everyone enjoys it this year. We hope to create new ideas in the future for this year as well.”
Kayla Lachance shared some struggles the club faced, saying, “I would say that it was definitely different than our usual way of doing things. Typically we have meetings in school and are able to discuss everything but due to covid it was all done on google meets. I feel overall though that we were able to pick really creative days and I’m excited to see everyone dress up virtually! I feel that this is a great way to distract students from the negative feelings associated with the virus and promote positivity and fun within our school!”
Spirit Week 2020 will definitely be different than years past, but in the end, Terryville High School as a community has been given the opportunity to connect with each other through this fun tradition – in a new and exciting way.
Editor’s note: We are having a special holiday Spirit Week this week and next, December 14- 23, to bring some holiday cheer! From now until the break, wear your most festive outfits to your live classes and spread some holiday cheer! Take some time to send an email to a teacher you are grateful for, a nice text or video to your friends and family, send a virtual holiday card or anything else that you can think of to show someone you care about them. Details are on the images below:
Written by Gianna Farrow