Are you feeling the school spirit right now?
Homecoming is happening in so many schools across the country. I know some schools, especially smaller schools, don’t do a football homecoming, but maybe they do a basketball homecoming later. So whenever the festivities are popping up in your school or in your district, I want you to be ready because this is a really exciting time of the year!
But to be honest with you, I’m not a football fan. I don’t get into watching football. Quite frankly, I can’t ever find the stinking football, thank God for that yellow line that somebody invented while watching football on TV. I naturally don’t get into the sporting events, but what I do get into are the spirit activities that come with a homecoming! If you want me to dress as a tacky tourist, like I am all over it! Get the fanny pack, get the florals buttoned down shirt, let’s do it!
If you want me to wear pajamas, I’m not just going to wear a pair of flannel pants, friends. I’m going to wear the all-out parrot fleece onezee to school. That is my jam!
I don’t know what your jam is when it comes to school spirit, but I think that we as teachers have to get excited about what our kids are excited about. If our students are repping their school colors and getting pumped about football and the homecoming dance and all of these things, then it is an opportunity for us to get excited too!
Shout out to my local community for bringing homecoming week to a new level.
This year we are doing a parade, we are doing a 5k race. We’ve got all the schools participating by entering in decorative floats. We’ve got other class reunions happening during homecoming week. I just got my teeth cleaned and my dentist said, “yeah, I’m having my 50th year class reunion and we have close to 200 people RSVP!” Half the class is coming back for not just their class reunion, but for the homecoming festivities! And I really believe we have to show school spirit during these special times of the year, like homecoming.
And it’s interesting because just two short years ago, this was not the case in my community. Homecoming was a cool thing, but it was la football game and a dance and that was kind of it. And it was fun for the kids, but it wasn’t this huge community event.
And then two years ago, unfortunately something kind of shook our community. We had a student walk into the high school and open fire in the cafeteria. And I think when something like that happens, that changes a community. That shakes a community. Thank God that nobody was seriously injured. Nobody passed away. There were zero casualties from this. And part of it was because of the way that the staff within the school banded together and reacted in a really, really, really efficient and safe way for students. But even when there aren’t casualties, when something like that happens, I think it creates this feeling of, “what can we do to make our community better? What can we do to band our community in a way where everyone feels safe and loved and supported?” How do we boost school spirit and school morale after something like that happens?
Kudos to my local community for saying, one thing that we can do is make homecoming a really special place! Ever since the school shooting, what we have done is create what we call a “green and gold day.” And instead of being in the school building on the anniversary of the scary event, what the school and the teachers and the community have done is said, let’s open up the community and get all of those students out into the public, painting, volunteering, working with students, working with the elderly or other awesome organizations. Let’s get them out and doing something special to give back to the community for the way that they responded after such a shocking event. And it is just heartwarming and emotional to think that last week we had 800 students doing beautiful things to create this positive ripple in the community!
Instead of saying, all right that happened, let’s kind of move forward and move beyond it and don’t talk about it, they’re saying, no…
We are going to call this green and gold day!
We are going to rep our student colors!
We are going to get out there and we’re going to give back and say we are strong!
And I love that.
That was the opening activity for homecoming week. And now this week, like I said before, there’s a parade and there’s a 5K and there’s all these spirit activities and it leads up to the football game and then to the school dance.
But at the end of the day it isn’t about the dance and it’s not about the football game.
When your community truly has school spirit, when your town truly has the spirit of enthusiasm that says we love our kids, we love our schools, we love our students, something special happens.
I think it’s beyond amazing that this parade is just going to fill people with excitement that this parade is going to fill people with old main candy, like tootsie rolls and butterscotches.
It is going to be this epic celebration. And I think that’s what schools should be.
So when we’re talking about we’ve got spirit, yes we do! We’ve got spirit! How about you? My question is, does the school that you’re working in, does it have school spirit? Does the community that you live in, are they celebrating the cool things like sporting events? And are you turning something that might be sad and tragic into an opportunity to create a community that’s way stronger on the other end of things?
I am proud to live in a community that has done that. I am proud to teach in a school right now that is showing that we are all about celebrating kids. I firmly believe that students should be running into schools with fearlessness, not running out of them with frustration. And when we give kids an opportunity to celebrate something cool happening within the four walls of that building, that is when some exciting things happen!
