Students at Arroyo Seco Junior High completed a series of activities on Friday meant to make them better students, friends and community members.
Starting up her first full year at Arroyo Seco after being appointed the school’s principal prior to the last spring semester, Lori Gambero said she wanted to teach her students about community before diving into a long year of instruction. It’s one of the things she talked with teachers about at their staff meeting before the school year began, with Jessica Meraz, director of the school’s Associated Student Body, helping to take up the task.
“The biggest thing, the goal of why this all came about, is, how can we start the year building schoolwide community and connection,” Gambero said. “Teachers do it in their classes the first week, right? You know, you do the name game, you do the relationships in the classroom, but how could we build it schoolwide?”
Students had four stations of activities throughout the day: team building; behavior expectations; school spirit; and team spirit. The last one revolves around the eight different school teams — each student is placed into one of eight that attends the same four core classes throughout the school year — learning to be good teammates, or classmates.
During one session, students were tasked with writing letters to themselves that they will then read again at the end of the semester to see how much they’ve grown and if they’ve kept up with their goals.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the day was when students went to the upper field for some games — rock-paper-scissors competitions and water dodgeball, where soaked sponges were used instead of balls.
The idea was to compete as a team and get everyone involved, something Ira Rounsaville, a social worker with the William S. Hart Union High School District overseeing campus culture and climate, said didn’t seem to be an issue. He added that with cell phones no longer allowed to be used during the school day, a policy that’s been in place at junior highs throughout the district for a couple years now, it entices all students to be involved in some fashion.
“If they had cell phones, I am imagining probably half or a third of these kids, there’d be a group on their phones, out doing their thing,” Rounsaville said. “But now you replace that social engagement with something like what they should be doing, connecting with each other one-on-one.”
Rounsaville said balance at a school is key. He said he saw students being taught in the multi-purpose room what the expectations are, as students and community members, during an earlier session before watching them release some of their energy with the outdoor activities and engaging socially during campus tours.
“To establish a positive and a strong culture, you have to have balance,” Rounsaville said. “And I think this day is teaching these kids how to be balanced. No. 1, you have this first week of school, you may be stressed, but it’s like teaching them to release some stress, like have some fun, not take things so seriously.”
Cadence Charrow, an eighth grader who also holds the title of treasurer in ASB, said the student leadership had been talking about this day since July. She said it was important for the rest of the student body to learn how to work together and communicate.
“That’s what this whole thing is about, like communicating with other peers and kind of just getting to know them, making new friends,” Charrow said.
New to the school but already taking up a leadership role is Brielle Pratchard, a seventh grader in ASB who was helping to keep order during water dodgeball. She said helping to plan an event like this has led to her own growth along with her classmates.
“I’ve learned a lot of communication,” Pratchard said, “and I’ve met a lot more people, which kind of helps me feel more comfortable.”
Eighth grader Ryder Zarick said it was important for him and the rest of ASB to show the other students what is expected since they are the campus leaders.
“We’re pretty much the leaders of the school, and we need to be good role models for all the students that are coming in, or coming from last year,” Zarick said.
Calling it a yearlong process, Gambero said just because the school is taking a day to work on community doesn’t mean it stops after Friday.
“I’m not a one-hit wonder person. I’m not a one-event person,” Gambero said. “You need to ingrain it so it really becomes part of your culture … I feel you spend the time on things that matter. I’m spending a whole day today because I feel this matters. It’s vital.”
While this is a new event, supporting students isn’t new to Arroyo Seco, Gambero said. The campus has a culture and climate group called Seco Sanctuary, overseen by science teacher Erika Garcia, that invites any student to come in during lunch to feel part of a group on campus.
“She had games for them at tables, we gave them food,” Gambero said, “and it was their safe space if some students were maybe eating alone or didn’t connect, or just students that wanted to come in and be part of it.”
Asked if it’s something that she’s looking at bringing back in future years — or even expanding to other school sites across the district — Gambero said she’d be more than happy to let others in.
But the most important thing that Gambero wanted her students to learn was that they are not alone and there is always someone to talk to or help with a problem.
“We are teaching them for high school and beyond, for adults, of how adults react with each other,” Gambero said. “How we can uplift each other instead of the negativity of bringing us down. I say it every day. I say it every week on my video. I say it in the morning every day. I say, ‘Aug. 16, 2024, will never happen again in your lifetime.’ And I told them to think about that: ‘How can you be positive?’ And what we do at Seco is we uplift each other.”
