Originally Published in the March 21st Print Publication
High School spirit fosters a sense of belonging to a community, pride, and unity — but what happens when a school is lacking in spirit? Because the school is new, NCHS lacks in traditions, spirit, and overall active participation.
North Creek High School opened in the fall of 2017, where it initially began to foster a sense of community and spirit, but was quickly shut down at the arrival of COVID19 during online schooling in 2020. Although it has been around five years since this incident, NCHS has found it difficult to re-establish school spirit. A lack of school spirit leads to overall disengagement and a weaker school culture, which is harmful towards the high school experience. Students find it difficult to be more involved because of the fear of embarrassment, as not many other students are open to participation.
School spirit nurtures a sense of pride in one’s academic journey and accomplishments, encouraging students to enjoy their high school and be more involved. A lack of school spirit can negatively lead to student disengagement, isolation, and a feeling of disconnect from the school community. Students who lack school spirit may be less likely to participate in extracurricular activities, school events, or community initiatives.
School spirit should be part of a fun high school experience for students. However, North Creek lacks school spirit and there needs to be ways to get more students involved. One suggestion could be putting out surveys before spirit weeks and see what majority of students would want to participate in, instead of just assigning random themes. A follow up idea is being more vocal about when spirit week is. A lot of the time students don’t realize it’s spirit week because there’s only a couple posters for it. One final idea could be rewarding class grades for their spirit wear. Although North Creek does already have rewards for school spirit, the rewards are never exciting enough for students to put much thought or effort into it. If the rewards were more exciting students would be more likely to participate.
Along with generating ideas on how to get students to participate, North Creek has to establish traditions that students can look forward to every year. North Creek has definitely tried to do this but none of them seem to last or really ever start. North Creek needs to figure out a tradition that students would actually want to participate in and get excited about.
School spirit can be a very fun and exciting experience for students but only when it’s presented to be that way.
