School Spirit at Helix

As homecoming week passed, we had seven days to remember all of the laughs, yells and most of all the spirit days! Many Helix students enjoy dressing up in solid white, Hawaiian, pajamas, or whatever the spirit day entailed. However, a lot of people think that our school spirit is much lower compared to other local high schools.
When speaking one-on-one with ASB teacher Mr. Krzywicki, also known as Coach K, he explained, “I think we do [have good school spirit], and the best part is that it is trending in the right direction. It’s increasing and more students are participating, but overall I think we do have good school spirit.”
I also asked him if our school is ‘lacking’ or has an ‘abundance’ of school spirit in comparison to our rival school, Grossmont. He responded with, “I don’t know if it is lacking, I think what is hard at times is when you see social media accounts you assume that that is what the whole school looks like. I think we are right there with those types of schools, could we be better, probably, but I don’t think it is a huge difference overall.”
Krzywicki also explained how our amount of school spirit isn’t what’s difficult about planning a spirit day. He says, “What’s difficult about planning a spirit day is trying to get 2500 students to all want to participate in the same dress-up day. Even in our class when we discuss it in ASB, you get those students who don’t agree, which is good because they represent the whole student body. Some people want complicated spirit days because it’s fun, others want simple dress up days because it’s easy.”
I questioned him on what goes into planning a spirit day and he took me through the steps. “It’s usually a brainstorm and discussion between the students in ASB. We talk about themes and from there we start to build dress up day ideas. Sometimes we know there is a dress up day we want and we will try and tie it to a theme. Other times the theme helps us to determine the dress up days which is what we traditionally do.” This is similar to planning a pep rally. They start in class, coming up with ideas they want to see for the event. Then they communicate with other groups like football, cheer, band, etc, to see if they want to participate and what they would want to do.
So far this school year Coach K’s favorite spirit day was the red, white and blue day because it stood out to the oblivious eye. Saying, “I like days where it’s noticeable that something is different on campus. White out day was another good one, as well as jersey day being a success. For homecoming week we discussed the green, blue and yellow for the colors of the Brazilian flag. We thought yellow wasn’t going to be a popular color and it could have been because two grade levels had it, but I actually thought it turned out really well.”
For my final question I asked him about repeating spirit days, he responded with, “Sometimes we do things because it’s more likely on a Monday there will be more participation because it is easier to remember. Sometimes we repeat ourselves because ‘we really liked it last time so lets do it again’. But that can get a little tedious and it can lead people to be uninterested in dressing up, it’s always important to keep it fresh and exciting.”
After interviewing Coach K it seems like Helix has a good amount of school spirit, however we can always have more. I’m sure we are all excited for the next spirit day, see you in the student section!