Spirit week gives Joliet West students an opportunity to show their school pride and have fun going all out for the planned events.  This year, spirit week was September 20-25. Students were all encouraged to show their spirit by dressing up for the scheduled theme days and by attending other events, such as the school pep assembly and homecoming games. Powder puff had a fantastic turn out, as did the varsity football game. West students enjoyed attending the pep assembly and homecoming dance. The only area that our school spirit was lacking in was the theme days.

This year, students were encouraged to take part in theme days by wearing college attire, crazy hair/mismatch clothes, animal print, band gear, and finally, their class colors. In past years, students have enjoyed going all out when dressing for these days. Participation was hindered this year. What was the problem? School pictures fell on the same week.

Participation in spirit week seemed to be negatively affected by school pictures. If the school is looking for students to take part in spirit week and dress for the theme days, they should ensure that pictures won’t be a conflict. West students could have done much better with spirit week if there had been better scheduling. How were we supposed to show our school spirit while trying to look nice for pictures?

Special effort should have been made to make sure that pictures were taken any week other than this one. Not everyone cares about their school picture, but many people do. If they wanted to look nice for their picture, they had to make a compromise and show reduced spirit. Students with pictures on Tuesday seemed to have it the worst. They didn’t want their yearbook and ID picture to be of them on mismatch/crazy hair day, nor would some of their parents let them.

It’s understandable that some school scheduling can be difficult but to get the most out of spirit week, these two events should have been held on separate weeks. Hopefully next year we won’t have to worry about taking pictures on the same week and will able to take complete advantage of spirit week.