Spirit weeks have a purpose behind them. Students are seen dressed up in spirit during the fun weeks that are planned to encourage belongingness at Fallon. Dressing up as a superhero to show how unique you are, or going all out in green to signify mental health are some of the ideas that have been brought to Fallon. “Start with Hello Week” and “Red Ribbon Week” are both spirit weeks that have been planned at Fallon this year.
Leadership starts by creating a calendar with each spirit week of the year listed. Once the date of an activity is approaching, Ms.Guinther, Fallon’s Leadership teacher and director, announces the work that is needed to execute this spirit week. For example, the “Let’s Start With Hello Week Spirit Week” was introduced to help include students who may feel left out, in the hope that situations like the horrific Sandy Hook shootings can be avoided.
These students work on social media platforms to reach a larger audience of students to dress up for the spirit weeks. Posters are a big part of spirit weeks. Students grab paint buckets and get straight to work, finishing four to five posters in one period. In less than a week, flyers are seen all over Instagram. Sometimes TikToks are even made to appeal to the visual aspects of the spirit weeks. This is all done to tie back inclusivity and which is a big part of Fallon and which is why school spirit is always encouraged.
Spirit weeks bring communities at Fallon together. Seeing people match with their friends and teachers creates a sense of belonging. Different spirit weeks are designed to suit the various activities going on at school, locally, or nationally.
According to a survey conducted at Fallon, 34% of students love spirit weeks, 58.8% like them, and the remainder of students are not the biggest fans of spirit weeks. Furthermore, over half of the students stated that they try their best to dress up on spirit days, and 25% stated that they rarely dress up.
Responses from the poll provided good insight on what people really think about spirit weeks. When students were asked how leadership could improve the efficiency of spirit weeks, many students responded that spirit weeks were, “too hard to do.” They cited neon day noting that most kids did not have neon lying around in their house.
Eighth-grader Moriah Beltran was asked what her favorite spirit day from this year has been so far, and she exclaimed, “I really liked Anything But a Backpack Day. It really was the most creative day and people got to go all out!” She recommended that in the future leadership finds more ways to incorporate spirit weeks in which people can be creative!
Even the simplest of spirit weeks have the strongest messages and leadership works hard to make this happen. Spirit weeks play an important role on the Fallon campus and are incredibly vital to the Fallon community. Spirit weeks will keep the Fallon community together and help to show school pride on our campus!
