From Spirit Week to service day, school-wide events are typically seen as a simple break from the classroom. However, beneath the excitement lies something far more important. These gatherings allow for student leadership opportunities, strengthened bonds between peers and faculty, improved mental health, and  valuable life lessons that can’t always be taught through textbooks.  

School events are more than just moments of celebration. They play a vital role in building connections and allowing for student growth. To gain a deep understanding of how events impact our school, we asked Principal Jonathan Mitchell to share his thoughts on the topic. “It is important to come together as a school, kind of to build community,” says Mr. Mitchell when asked why we have school events in the first place. He even claims that Spirit Week specifically can “build class unity and healthy competition that the kids look forward to.” 

It is apparent that large school events, such as Spirit Week, have a deep impact on student relationships and motivation within our school. Mr. Mitchell also provides input to  whether or not mental health is improved during these events. “It is a release of seriousness, offers a focus on fun, and just allows everyone to be goofy. Everyone is so busy with sports, music, drama, work, and more, so it’s just nice to have a break and is a pleasant disruption from the usual routine.” Mr. Mitchell even claims that he is “bummed he can’t play the student-teacher basketball game this year,” which is one of the highlights of his Spirit Week experience. As we listened to Principal Mitchell, we realized how school events, like Spirit Week, allow for an opportunity for students to express themselves and see faculty and other classmates outside of their regular roles. Our meeting with Mr. Mitchell concluded with the question of his thoughts on possibly holding a second Spirit Week sometime throughout the year and he said, “Yes, I’d be open to that.” 

To gather more crowd sourced data, we sent an anonymous survey with five questions related to Spirit Week to accumulate non-biased information. We chose to make the questions based on Spirit Week, since sophomores hadn’t yet experienced service day. The survey was sent to the student body and out of 192 responses, 94% of students voted that they generally like Spirit Week. Additionally, 93.7% of students said that Spirit Week makes them want to come to school more, 76.2% said that Spirit Week improves their overall performance in the classroom, and 87% of students felt more connected to their peers during Spirit Week, including students they may not usually engage with. In our final question, which was asking the students whether or not they would be interested in another big school wide event similar to Spirit Week, 91.1% of the students said they would be interested. Some other responses included were: “Yes, though I wish more people participated,” and “It’d be nice to have a few scattered throughout the year, especially before holiday breaks” 

 Senior class secretary, Maddie Lavoie, stresses the amount of work that goes into the planning of Spirit Week. She said, “The biggest challenges I face are mainly getting people to answer their emails and also getting people to participate can be difficult.” Although the work behind it can be overwhelming with the combination of extracurriculars, the end results are very positive.

We also went on a hunt for credible research regarding this topic and we found multiple sources from psychologists relating to how beneficial school events are. Research suggests that participation in organized events are found to be a possible preventative factor of mental health. Additionally, social engagement is significant to a student’s academic achievement and events help form a stronger sense of community. According to a survey of 1.016 high school students, 91% claim they are more confident, 90% are more likely to be leaders, 88% are happier, 87% are more involved in their community, and 78% are more fulfilled. This proves that even schools far from our own are experiencing positive results by holding school spirit events and that they overall provide beneficial outcomes. 

Now the next time you are dressing up for Spirit Week or walking into our annual earth day celebration, notice how these experiences can bring our community together. Look at your surroundings and see how the mood is boosted and students are finding their true selves. It hides in plain sight, yet is one of the most beneficial aspects that brightens the future of our school.