No School Spirit

What happened to school spirit?!!!!!!

Yesterday I sat up a photo-shoot for the participants in my program.  My supervisor had created a new brochure for us to use for recruiting purposes and he wanted to use images of my students instead of stock photos.  I contacted my students for about a week and a half, reminding them of the photo-shoot and how awesome it would be to leave their legacy in the county and to be seen all over the state, but most of the students could care less.  Needless to say, I was disappointed.  I was able to get them to participate, but this photo-shoot was so awkward.  The students had no enthusiasm, no get up and go, and the ones who did were few in numbers. It was like pulling teeth to get them to have fun with the shoot.

If this type of thing was happening at either of the two high schools that I attended 10 to 14 years ago, all of my friends would have jumped on this opportunity.  We enjoyed having fun together, even though we all hung in different cliques.  We would have already figured out what outfits we were going to wear and our poses would have already been practiced.  I literally had to tell my students how to smile, how to stand, where to look at.  It was so bad that when they were asked to do a silly pose they asked me what to do. *Mouth FELL to the floor*

Have schools gotten this boring?  Have students lost interest in having fun at school?  From what I can see, the answer to my questions is YES!  Pep rallies aren't the same in anymore!  I can't imagine going to a pep rally and not TURNING ALL THE WAY UP!!!!  Pep rallies were so fun you would leave out of the gym sweating as if you had just come off of the dance floor.  These students aren't excited like that today.  They're on their cell phones, looking down and not paying attention to the world around them.  Teachers are teaching to the test in an effort to boost test scores (NOT WORKING BTW), so that they can save their jobs.  School administration seem to lurk in the shadows, trying to avoid parents who think that these schools are the equivalent to Burger King, and most of the time they do get to have it their way.

I'm a product of public schooling and I would like for my future children to attend public school and enjoy it the way that I did, but if I keep seeing what I see here, we're sending our kids elsewhere.