By Lauren Pinheiro, Photography Editor
This year, staff and students have increased club management, advertisement and involvement due to the implementation of “Lunch and Learn,” a reactivation form, a bulletin board and a Schoology group.
At the beginning of the year, the student activities office sent out a reactivation form to nearly 200 clubs to verify if they were operating. It confirmed 118 groups. It asked for “sufficient student interest,” alignment with Conestoga’s mission, an available and willing adviser, no duplication of purpose or activities of other clubs and approval from ninth grade assistant principal and student activities administrator Dr. Nicole Jolly.
“I think the whole club activation at the beginning of this year was good to weed out the defunct ones,” senior and president of Key Club Lauren Wu wrote in an email. “I don’t have any real complaints or concerns.”
Peer Mediation created Club Collaboration Group, a new Schoology group where student leaders and advisers can communicate with each other. Additionally, the student activities office started featuring weekly club advertisements on a bulletin board highlighting the purpose of the group and its meeting schedule.
As clubs can meet during Lunch and Learn, some have experienced a noticeable increase in participation since the beginning of the school year.
Junior and president of the Muslim Student Association Zaina Sohail plans on using Lunch and Learn to host club meetings.
“We have not met during Lunch and Learn so far. The events that we’ve had lasted longer than 30 minutes so we don’t want to limit those events, but we do plan on having our monthly meetings during Lunch and Learn because 30 minutes is the perfect amount of time for our meetings,” Sohail said.
Katie Wilson, an adviser for the Disability Awareness and Pillboxes for Patients clubs, feels that Lunch and Learn has benefited the school community, especially as meetings can be more accessible to students who have commitments outside of school.
“I love how the district is trying to institutionalize ways that kids can get to the things that they want to get to and build it into the time when they’re already here,” Wilson said. “You’re here a lot, you don’t need to always be here more.”
Lauren Pinheiro can be reached at [email protected].
