As the holiday season ends, so do the festive activities like the Gingerbread Contest, where students compete for the best built gingerbread house, and Turkey Bowling, where a whole turkey is used as a bowling ball to knock down pins. Students return back to a normal school schedule with nothing except for Tolo planned until the end of the year. One thing needs to be kept during the time after Tolo, and that is spirit weeks.

During the time before and after Tolo, there are no school-wide activities planned as of now to keep the students and staff connected. To help keep that connection among them, spirit weeks help by encouraging students to participate in activities such as dressing up for “Student-Teacher Switch Day” or partaking in funny themes such as “Dress up as a Holiday Character.” With those activities, teachers can also feel included to participate with the students.

By adding more spirit weeks, the participation can help build a reputation in the school to be more engaging with other schools such as Bremerton High School and Olympic High School. The inter-high spirit weeks allow more connection between the schools since they are within the same district. We could have more inter-high spirit weeks to better build the communities inside and outside the schools.

Spirit weeks also don’t have to be on a constant basis. They could be a monthly event either to celebrate the start or end of the month. The big spirit weeks that take time, such as creating a whole outfit scheme for a day like “Western Wednesday” can be saved for special occasions such as Homecoming, Tolo, and holidays like Halloween and Christmas.

These new spirit weeks don’t have to be something big to be engaging. They don’t have to be excessive like “Anything but a Backpack Day,” It could be something simple such as “Class Colors Day.” It’s easier for people to put something on quickly in the morning, like “pajama day,” as it’s a simple theme that’s easily accessible. 

Central Kitsap High School has a lot of amazing spirit days from the past years that can be reused again. These older ideas can branch off to create more involving spirit weeks in the future to keep the school’s community connected and its spirits high.