17 ideas to generate more school spirit

BHS business and marketing students were having a little fun while taking a break from cleaning up the street they adopted adjacent to the school. Experiences like this are a great way to build shared purpose and enthusiasm for school.

In a previous post Why school spirit matters, I explained some of my thoughts on why school spirit is important and should be encouraged and developed. Everyone in a school contributes to school spirit, but we need strong leaders (students, teachers, parents, principals, etc.) to help show the way to a more spirited school. Here are 17 ideas that might be helpful for increasing enthusiasm and enjoyment in your school.

1. Be a school that celebrates. Notice successes and strong efforts and make them visible.

2. Principals should be lead learners, but should also lead the fun!

3. Have a great Spirit Week and encourage everyone to participate.

4. Establish a strong online presence (Facebook, Twitter, website) and build your school's brand.

5. Promote your yearbook.

6. Have a yearlong battle of the classes with various opportunities to earn points. The class with the most points wins.

7. Get clubs and organizations, not just cheerleaders, involved in leading spirit activities.

8. Encourage teachers to model spirit. After all, participating in spirit activities will make an impact in the classroom.

9. Find ways to get students and staff wearing more school colors, T-shirts, etc.

10. Have contests and games throughout the school year and encourage participation.

11. Have activities during lunches to have fun and build community.

12. Establish traditions that are positive. Or, renew traditions that have fallen aside.

13. Encourage different groups in the school to support one another. Attend another team's sporting event together.

14. Enlist parents to help with developing spirit ideas.

15. Have teachers or principals do crazy stuff that students will love.

16. Tell stories from your school's history.

17. Get involved in the community and get the community involved in school.

I'd love to hear your ideas for building school spirit! Leave a comment.

Top 5 blog posts

The following blog posts generated the most page views in the relatively short life of my blog. It's always interesting for me to see what people are reading, or at least perusing. It's funny how building an audience, while not my primary aim, is motivating to continue to write and think. Writing and thinking are the main objectives of my blogging efforts. But it is great to know that these efforts are interesting to others too.

1. Seven questions to guide decisions of an educational leader. This piece is by far the most read article I've produced to date. Over the years, I've collected a number of questions that I use to guide decisions and help me reflect on my practice. This piece is heavily influenced by Todd Whitaker and a number of other mentors I actually know (hope to meet Todd someday!).

2. Combine instructional rounds and Twitter to make learning visible. Almost anything to do with Twitter seems to be interesting to blog readers. This selection details how BHS teachers toured one another's classrooms and Tweeted about all the great things happening. It was a way to build a sense of community, get teachers in other teacher's classrooms, and generally make learning visible in our school. As a bonus, it was a great way for our staff members to continue experimenting with Twitter.

3. A graded paper will stop learning in its tracks. Standards based grading has been a big topic for our school and several of our teachers are piloting their classrooms using SBG. This piece explains how a grade on a paper, even with feedback comments, may stop learning. Read the post to learn why.

4. Why do educators need Twitter. In addition to completing my doctoral studies, Twitter has been the best professional development I've encountered. This short reflection discusses why Twitter is so powerful for learning.

5. I love being an educator because... This post was inspired by the #MOedchat summer blog challenge. The title is revealing. It's all about why I love being an educator. I included two videos that are inspiring for finding your purpose, one from Jon Gordon and one from Daniel Pink.

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Why school spirit matters

I think everyone realizes school spirit is important, but we don't ever talk about it, at least not in the way we discuss standardized test scores or curriculum decisions. I guess it's just a 'softer' topic. After all, in its narrowest definition, school spirit is the territory of cheerleaders, pep rallies, and big rivalries. As a result, you won't see too many articles in educational journals on the topic. But I'd like to make a case for why school spirit is really important.

First of all, it's important to clarify how I am defining school spirit. I'm talking about a collective feeling shared by various members of school community, a feeling of pride, energy, commitment, and togetherness. It often manifests itself through sports teams, but it should be celebrated across all aspects of a school, not just extracurriculars.

1. School spirit helps everyone buy into a positive vision of the school. When students and teachers have pride in their school, that collective confidence can translate to self-efficacy, "I'm part of a good school, I can do this."

2. School spirit creates a stronger sense of community. When there is a strong sense of community, there is a feeling of being part of something larger than oneself. We are more likely to follow community norms if we see that others value and share a sense of community. Some norms we value are having good attendance, being respectful, and taking responsibility.

3. School spirit makes people feel good. When we have the 'we' feeling that school spirit generates, we feel better. And when we feel better, we have more energy, more creativity, more compassion, more of all the good stuff. School spirit makes it contagious.

In my next post, I'm going to share a list of ideas for increasing school spirit.

Blogger's note: the picture shown above is from a football game where our student section, with permission, was throwing baby powder in the air with each touchdown. It looked really cool. However, we soon learned that it also makes it really hard to breathe for other fans seated nearby in the stadium. We had to stop, but overall no harm done.