School has been a major part of our lives since we were as young as four, five, maybe even younger. School has been the same every single year; it changed occasionally as we grew, like going from elementary school to middle school we had a slight adjustment. That slight change was nothing compared to changes made last year.

We went from having to go to school five days a week, having seven classes a day, all of them around fifty minutes. Then we went to school two days a week, four classes one day, two maybe three the next day.

Last year, school was pretty boring, most of us didn’t talk to each other, or turn our cameras on when we were remote. There weren’t many teacher student bonds being made, and most of all there was no school spirit.

Not many people could go to any games , and there weren’t any traditional school events like homecoming, prom, and assemblies. Two weeks into this school year, we’ve had more school events than we’ve had in the last year.

“You know this year in terms of differences, I think having everybody at the school is allowing us to do more traditional types of events,” Tim Slater, the Senate adviser. says. I agree because we’re planning a homecoming and there was a great crowd at the soccer game pictured..

This year I look forward to school being more normal, and we have a great shot at normalcy since there’s going to be a homecoming, Sept. 18.. And we even have spirit week September 13-17, and on the 17 the football team will be playing Denver South.

This year school spirit isn’t that high mostly because of last year when there was a major lack of events to be excited about. And this year we have a bunch of events Slater and the senate will be working on..

From my own perspective, school spirit is low. I haven’t been to any games, but I was at the first assembly. It was funny how the senior half of the gym was going bananas, but the sophomore side was crickets. There is potential for more school spirit, but I have yet to see it.

“Based on the welcome back assembly and drone photos, everybody was more energetic than I was used to. I’ve gotten more questions or homecoming from students and parents this year, mostly because freshmans and sophmores have never done this before. I feel like everyone is more ready to participate,” Slater says.

“I mean [school spirit] is better than it was last year,” sophomore Zoe Mentel says.

“The kids would have to stop thinking it’s dumb, if they particapated it’d be fun. And another thing is the sophomores are kind of confused on what school spirit is, so we don’t really know what we’re doing,” sophomore Brisaeus Crabtree adds.

Crabtree has a point, you can’t really have school spirit if you think it’s lame. Plus, freshmans and sophomores have no idea what it is or how to do it. Not experiencing a traditional school year has left many students not knowing what high school should look like and not knowing how to show their school spirit.

Another way to improve school spirit is having teachers participate more. Meagan Mcdowell, an English teacher here at the Farm agrees with this. She’s been trying to get teachers more involved in school spirit by having them do dances in front of the school during assemblies instead of standing off to the side awkwardly.

Even this week, spirit week, McDowell has created her own spirit wars between her class periods. She’s keeping a tally of how many people dress up, and the class who dresses up the most she’s throwing a cookie party for.

I’m hoping my class period wins, of course, but it’s awesome to see a teacher putting so much effort into helping kids love their school.

All we need for more school spirit is the want for school spirit. And this week I’ve seen a lot more, since it’s spirit week. There’s still room for improvement but it’s still amazing to see so many people participating.