Students have the ability to change school culture

Serena Bettis • February 11, 2016

20160209_161631 — Students should attend Culture Team meetings if they want a say on school culture. Photo Credit: Serena Bettis

In most television shows and movies about high school, the characters always run for their student council, promising to change their lunch menu, or school policies that all students complain about but no one can actually effect. Everyone knows students cannot truly change much about the school regarding class structure, homework, and the length of lunch. However, students are the best people for the job if they are looking to change the overall culture and climate of the school. The Culture and Climate Team at Fossil Ridge High School makes this possible.

At the latest meeting, with student attendance at an all-time low, teacher and facilitator Brendan Gallagher mentioned that with such a small work force, the Culture Team will not be able to achieve all its goals for the year. If more students participate, it will be easier for plans to be set in action.

Towards the beginning of the school year, students took a survey in advisory about how safe they feel in certain aspects of the school’s culture. The three lowest ranking categories – social and civic learning (stress), social and emotional wellness, and on social media – were taken to the Culture Team, which split into sub-groups to focus on ways to improve those aspects of the school.

A major theme in each sub-group is making students feel as though they belong. Whether it is having a friend to talk to between classes, people to help protect others from cyberbullying, or having the ability to deal with stressful classes, the biggest part of a student’s comfort in the school environment has to do with human connection.

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To help fix these problems, the Social Media sub-group aims to educate students on how to stop their peers from posting inappropriate messages or spreading hate about other students. They hope to create advisory lessons, some type of media campaign using Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and other sites, and Ridge TV segments on how to stick up for others. For Social and Emotional Safety, that sub-group wants to help every student feel included in school life by placing an emphasis on positive messages about students who come from other countries or have disabilities. This involves many projects where students will be challenged to get to know someone new and do a random act of kindness, as well as promote Unified Sports. Social and Civic Learning centers on giving students resources for stress management. They want students to be self-aware and able to visit a website that can help them relax, and a judgement-free area where they can get anything off their chest is a goal.

Attending a Culture Team meeting is one of the best ways students can directly influence and better Fossil. All opinions and thoughts are welcome at these meetings and it is often one large brainstorming activity. More brainpower is needed, though, along with hands to help get the ball rolling on many projects. Students who go to a meeting will not only be welcomed with open arms, but also joyously included because they can bring fresh ideas to the table. Those who wish to partake in the Culture Team can attend the next meeting on Thursday, March 10, or contact any of the counselors, deans, vice principals, or STUCO reps for more information on how to help.

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About the Contributor

Serena Bettis, Editor-in-Chief

Serena Bettis, senior, is entering into her third year on the Etched in Stone staff as this year’s Editor-in-Chief. A four year journalism student, she has high hopes for Etched in Stone this school year, and wants to be able to guide the staff in achieving their goals as much as possible. While Bettis has become a much more outspoken person than she was when she started at Fossil Ridge High School, she still finds discomfort speaking in front of large groups of people (“large” being defined anywhere from 6 to 30), but is more than ready to grow in that aspect of leadership over the course of the year. Most of her journalistic goals for the year are not personal, but rather involve the entire program. She aims to further improve upon the look of the Etched in Stone website, which she spent countless hours on her junior year, enough for it to win awards before she graduates.

Aside from Etched in Stone, Bettis takes part in the school marching, jazz, and concert bands as a flute player, volunteers with Key Club, and is the Historian for the National Honor Society. She has also held a part-time job at TCBY for over a year, and now knows more than she needs to about the sugar content in frozen yogurt. In her spare time, which is often hard to come by, Bettis can be found reading for fun, lamenting about how none of the new Young Adult romance novels she used to love so much are good anymore, working on making the perfect French macaron, or binge watching her recent addiction, Game of Thrones. Music is a large part of her life, and her favorite genre is difficult to describe because she listens to many different bands. Some of her favorites include twenty one pilots, All Time Low, and Halsey, more alternative bands such as Issues and SWMRS, pop artists including Carly Rae Jepsen (“she’s so much more than “Call Me Maybe””), and Little Mix, and various songs by Spanish singers.

She is more than ready for graduation, and aspires to be attending college in Chicago by this time next year. Bettis knows that she wants to double major in journalism and foreign languages, with a potential minor in music, though she is undecided on what specific occupation she wants after college. Her best advice to someone who does not know what they are interested in is to simply join different activities and see what happens from there. “Eventually, sometime during sophomore year, journalism became the only class I wanted to go to, and even now I love it more than I used to love band, so that’s when it hit me that this was what I wanted to be involved in for most of my life,” she said. Another somewhat undecided goal of hers is to join the Peace Corps either during or after college, and she hopes that an experience in a different country with complete strangers might help her figure out what exactly she wants to do with her life.