Homecoming Queen

My Student Body Officers and Class Officers worked so hard this week getting ready for Homecoming.  One of their jobs was to ask clubs and organizations for nominees for Homecoming Royalty.  As usual, we had many football players, cheerleaders, drill team members, leads from the upcoming school musical, and other popular students nominated.  However, I also received a request from one of the special education teachers asking that one of his students, who is autistic, be nominated and I agreed.  At the beginning of the week one of my officers took pictures of each nominee and this girl asked if she could have her picture taken the next day because she wanted to curl her hair!  So adorable.  The student body voted each day at lunch and this teacher brought his whole class down to vote for their classmate.  By the middle of the week she had quite a few votes and then the momentum hit.  Students began campaigning for her so she ended up winning by a landslide!  It made me so proud of our student body!  Calling her mother to tell her that her daughter had won will always be one of my very favorite experiences!  Let's just say the tears were streaming!  She was crowned yesterday at the Homecoming Assembly and her whole family came to see her.  Her grandfather broke down in tears when her name was announced!

She was so excited!

I was so proud of the young man voted as King!  He made her feel so special and even bought her some pink roses.

I'm also proud of the other couples in the Homecoming Court who were so willing to let her have the spotlight.  Being Homecoming Queen is a big deal and I think these girls were very gracious!

I mentioned on Facebook that I was so proud of the students of Hunter High for electing a student with special needs and a friend from high school, who works at KUTV, saw my post.  He contacted me about having a TV crew come film the assembly.  Needless to say, my officers were very excited and Emily, the Student Body President, was even interviewed on camera.  We were able to watch the feature (go here to see it) during our student government class.  After we saw it Emily said, "All the stories before ours were all about bad things.  It was nice to see a story about something good.  There are still good things in the world."  Indeed.

The Homecoming Royalty was honored during halftime at the football game (which we won 42-14).  She was so excited to ride in the back of the truck and our King took very good care of her, telling her where to wave!

My officers have done so much work to make Homecoming a success this year (the Spirit Can was a big hit at the assembly once again) and I am very honored to work with them!

2015-2016 Student Body Officers & Class Officers

This year I am working with the Class Officers as well as the Student Body Officers and I am loving every minute of it!  Here are some of the pictures taken by my friend Lesa at the International Peace Gardens a few weeks ago.

SBOs & Class Officers

Student Body Officers

Senior Class Officers

Junior Class Officers

Student Body Officers

Senior Class Officers

Junior Class Officers

SBOs & Class Officers

Being the student government adviser is a lot of work (we are in the middle of Homecoming and I just now picked up $343.00 worth of curly willow from a wholesale florist because my group wants to turn the dance floor into a forest and don't even get me started on the pinata) but it is also so much fun!  They make me laugh every single day!

2014-2015

2013-2014

It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times

This week I had a really big setback with the sale of my house which put the purchase of my new house in jeopardy.  It was beyond frustrating to me because we were ready to close next week.  I packed up my entire house and was in the process of getting ready to move everything to storage until I could close on the new house the following week.  I shed quite a few tears!  Thankfully everything has been resolved with my house (and it looks like I will probably be able to move forward with the new house) but the timeline has been pushed back three weeks.  Of course, I am so grateful that I don't have to start the entire process all over again but it hasn't been a lot of fun living with everything I own in boxes this week and I certainly do not relish the thought of another three weeks of this!  It is hard to come home to empty rooms!  My only solace has been school (solace was a vocabulary word this week).  I absolutely love my classes!  My sophomores have started a short story unit and my seniors have started reading Beowulf and we have already had some amazing discussions.  Also, my officers are just so much fun to work with.  We have already been so busy and we've spent a lot of time this week getting ready for Homecoming, staying late at school for several nights working on a banner.  They keep me laughing all the time so I don't have time to dwell on my real estate woes!

I think they did an amazing job on the banner (the moon was made with chalk) and they have received a lot of really positive feedback from students (and teachers) so they are very excited.  I don't think I will look back on selling my house with any particular fondness but I always want to remember what a great start I had to the 2015-2016 school year!

Welcome to Hunter

On Friday the SBOs and Class Officers sponsored the Welcome Assembly.  We now have the ninth graders at HHS so our studentbody is quite a bit bigger.  The administration thought it would be better to have the assembly in the afternoon because some students would naturally go home early.  I was afraid that everyone would go home early!  I needn't have worried because the gym was packed with an enthusiastic crowd and it was a lot of fun!  The assembly was a huge success (after only three days to prepare!) and I am so proud of the officers!  We had all of the performing arts groups involved and the officers had some fun games.

My favorite part of the assembly was the Spirit Can.  The officers asked me if I could get them a galvanized metal garbage can and, since that sounded perfectly reasonable, I found one at Home Depot.  They spent an afternoon painting it and we filled it with Hunter shirts, candy, and other prizes.  Whenever there were any transitions or set-ups during the assembly, the officers would take the Spirit Can to a section of the gym, raise the lid to get the crowd cheering, and throw out the items into the crowd.  It was a huge hit.  Even our principal commented on what a good idea it was and offered to order more Hunter gear to fill it.  We plan to use it throughout the year at assemblies and games!

I am usually a bit stressed out about assemblies but I was very relaxed about this one.  The officers were so pumped up all day and very enthusiastic about what they had planned and I guess it rubbed off on me!  They all have more personality than they know what to do with and they keep me laughing all the time!  The first week of school is usually a bit difficult getting everything ready and adapting to new schedules and classes but I have had so much fun with this group and I am excited for the coming year!  Now bring on Homecoming (in three weeks!)

Note:  I am not a hugger but after the assembly we were all so happy about how it went that a spontaneous group hug happened.  Our principal caught the moment and I'm kind of glad he did!

Off to a Great Start

Yesterday was the first day of school and my officers definitely hit the ground running!  We had to plan an assembly for Friday (tomorrow!) and Homecoming is in three weeks!  I have to admit that I am a little bit stressed out about Homecoming because of everything that I have going on in my life right now but I am just so excited to work with this group of students!  They have so many great ideas!  I am particularly excited about one idea for the assembly (it involved a trip to Home Depot to buy a galvanized metal garbage can!) and I'm also pretty excited about their theme for Homecoming (Into the Woods).  They have been hard at work for the past several weeks to make sure that the 2015-2016 school year is a success and I am very proud of them!

They came in on Tuesday (their last day of summer vacation) to make this amazing banner to welcome the students.  They are so artistic!  One of the officers drew those giant letters freehand and cut them out of paper!  They also went around the building helping teachers set up their classrooms.  Hunter High has had a lot of construction and painting going on over the summer and many teachers were not able to have access to their classrooms until Tuesday which was stressful, to say the least!  I know the teachers really appreciated their help (I certainly appreciated them moving my heavy filing cabinets for me).

Last week they sponsored an orientation for the incoming sophomores and freshmen (we have freshmen at HHS for the first time this year and they are so little) and they did such a great job!  We planned this quite a while ago but I've been so distracted that I didn't really touch base with them until that day.  They followed through with everything we had planned and were completely ready to go!  I can't tell you how much I appreciated that!

Several weeks ago they sponsored a blood drive with the American Red Cross.  Not only is this an incredible amount of work to organize, but they gave up an entire day of their summer to run it!  I am so lucky to get to work with such wonderful students!  It's going to be a great year!

2014

2013

Leadership Conference 2015

 This week I went with the HHS Student Body Officers and Class Officers to a leadership conference at Dixie State University in St. George.  I was so happy to leave the chaos of my life behind and I had so much fun with them!

We had time to plan for the 2015-2016 school year (but I think they are just plotting against me here).

We participated in an amazing activity called "Break Through" where the students literally broke a one-inch thick board with their bare hands.  We did this activity last year and those officers were very affected by it so I was really looking forward to having this group go through the experience.  It was amazing!  This year they made the advisors do it, too!  I was really afraid that I wouldn't be able to break it but we are all more powerful than we can even imagine and we can channel that power if we choose to!

Yeah.  They all have more personality than they know what to do with!  They were singing, chanting, and playing games everywhere we went which made them extremely popular with the other schools (you should have seen all of the other schools saying goodbye to them yesterday!)  They kept me laughing all week!  Also, aren't those shirts fabulous?  My friend made them for us!

There was a really fun poster making workshop where they learned some cool chalk techniques!  I thought their poster turned out amazing!

We got to see Beauty and the Beast at the Tuacahn Amphitheater.  The majority of them had never been to a live theatre performance before and it was beyond thrilling for me to watch their reaction to this show!  It was a magical production and the two lead actors were incredible!

We had the opportunity to perform some community service at the Utah Food Bank in St. George.  It was a great experience.

Our assistant principal took us all to dinner at Chili's and it was delicious!

We also had some great keynote speakers, round table discussions, and workshops and we got to participate in a spirit bowl, a black light dance, Dixie Idol (a talent show), and a swim party.  It was a really fun week!  Thank you Dixie State University for showing us such a great time!

Of course we had to make a stop at Swig on the way out of town!