Over the course of the years, school spirit has slowly been fading. At first, it wasn’t noticeable, but as time continues on, less and less people are participating in homeroom hustles and the school spirit is quickly disappearing! The special thing about our school is the spirit that brings everyone in our school community together! Spirit at our school is crucial because it allows students to forget about school for a second, in a world where that’s all they think about. Young students at our school look up to those in the highschool. We’re excited and eager to celebrate together and try and win festivities like wacky week. However, these school festivities and challenges are rapidly losing their popularity and interest from students.
A perfect example of our school spirit being lost is,the week of Valentines day. It was announced that the middle school valentines disco was canceled, that was scheduled to take place this weekend, because only fifty students signed up! A few years ago, it was the only thing that middle school students would be talking about for weeks before. Compared to now, when there are not even enough students who want to go for the event to even take place. Even if some students find the idea of going to a school disco with others unappealing, it’s guaranteed that in previous years that all students left the disco with a smile from ear to ear, happy that they came.
Moreover, a few weeks ago, the Student Council announced that they were organizing anything but a backpack day! But, when the day came around, many students came with just an ordinary backpack. Last year, many students showed up to school with creative replacements of a backpack, such as strollers and shopping baskets. This day is planned for students, in order to give them the opportunity to be creative and think outside the box, as well as to allow students to look forward to something humorous and fun after a stressful week. The reason behind more and more students participating in school events is unclear and can be caused by several factors. As younger students move up from primary to secondary school, they look up to the older students not participating in school events, and therefore, influence them to do the same thing,
Furthermore, Wacky Week is one of ISL’s most popular events has been dwindling in participation and engagement. The issue with Wacky Week is not the competitiveness nor the problem of not having a good enough theme but it is the reluctance of certain year group members to just go with the flow. If a student doesn’t want to get really involved in the performance or the scavenger hunt, that is entirely (well, not entirely, but maybe a little) understandable, but puts a lot of pressure on the who do get involved as they have to take charge on organising the performance, scavenger hunt, learning a dance and having to represent the whole entire year group. Nevertheless, over the last couple of years, it has inevitably been seen that students have taken it less and less seriously and have done the bare minimum of participating but then complain about how little effort was put into the event and how it is not the same anymore.
The Valentine disco, the homeroom hustles, and Wacky Week are all events that are made to be all about school spirit and participating as well as connecting with everyone in your year group to have a fun time with one another. It gives each year group the opportunity to win points and prove to the other years how creative your year group is. However, not all of our spirit has been lost yet which is evidently seen during sports day and supporting ISL’s sport’s teams. Nevertheless, these past few years especially with COVID-19 have challenged us with trying to maintain our school spirit putting us as students to the test. Don’t give up hope students, we must find our spirit again!