Field day: a day of games, color themes, competitions and activities that take place under the warm sun and end with ice pops. These strong memories associated with the term “field day” are created at a young elementary age that many WCHS students now reminisce about.
School spirit is a hot topic of student participation at WCHS, many staff and administration feel as if Churchill students do not show enough school spirit. This is often due to a lack of participation in spirit weeks, color wars and other dress-to-impress competitions. However what students will get spirited for is sports events whether that is for football, basketball or their team theme. This is one of the few ways the students are willing to show their school spirit.
Field days should be brought back in high schools to increase school spirit and allow students to have a fun day filled with fun and activities. High school students are often willing to show school spirit when it is for a dedicated event rather than just for an everyday school day. If WCHS were to implement a dedicated field day that took place during a normal school day many students would show interest and participate in coordinated spirit.
According to Education Weekly, school field days are able to create meaningful and worthwhile team experiences that students are able to bring over to the collaboration they use in school. By working together with various students, problem-solving ability will be challenged and students will be able to grow off of experiences from field day.
With this, students will be able to also create new friendships and bonds with different students that they may not have classes. These field days should be a fun replacement day in place of a traditional day of school. Often there are days in school where each class is a catch-up day. By replacing these with field days once or twice a year, students will have yet another fun event to look forward to as a break from the endless cycle of school work.
According to the Connecticut Association of schools, greater school spirit is also tied to being socially and civilizing engaged with the school, not to mention better academic performance. While school spirit may be low at WCHS, it has proven to have positive benefits on students at schools who have high levels of school spirit.
Students will also be able to re-experience parts of their childhood that they miss. This may help reinforce certain memories and create new ones before a larger chapter of college and jobs opens up.
Some may argue that these allocated field days would take away from academic instruction however there are many days in classes where no instruction takes place. These are often called catch-up or make-up days and often there are days of school where almost every class has a makeup day. Days like this can be used and strategically planned to fit around the ends of quarters and deadlines where students have these makeup days to fit in field days.
WCHS should implement field days to increase school spirit. It has proven to be an important factor in the school environment and a student’s social and academic engagement in school. This will foster a more positive environment overall for WCHS and promote school spirit.
