This school year, Berkley High School’s Student Leadership is implementing a new way to reward student participation for spirit-based events.They are calling it spirit points; each class is set to compete to win spirit points and whoever has the most points by the end of the school year will win an Ice Cream Social for the whole grade. Class President, Allie Capuano, reports on the new system to help students understand how they work, why they were created, and their benefits and drawbacks.
Spirit points are earned from “participating in spirit days and going to student leadership run events, big or small,” Capuano starts, “If you attend, we ask what grade you’re in, which earns you a point for your grade. Every time we have an event or spirit week, we will use tickets like we did previously or have people count [the points].” The tickets passed out during Homecoming week were not only used for the raffle but were also counted according to the color coordination with each grade to keep track of who dressed up each day. Also, during the pep assembly on September 27, points were awarded to grades for winning events. The goal of spirit points is to boost competitiveness among grades and create more excitement around pep assemblies.

Capuano explains that spirit points were created because, “The past couple years we had very low participation so we were trying to incentivize kids to participate.” She shares that her personal experience of student participation in high school has been very low and “In my position, I have more of a voice and I wanted to use that to increase school spirit which is a big part of the high school experience,” adding that “the more people who participate, the more fun it is for everyone. It will benefit everyone if all grades participate in school spirit.” So, overall, the purpose of spirit points is to hopefully improve student engagement and make students get more excited about school-spirited activities.
So far, the establishment of spirit points has boosted spirit week participation with more students dressing up during Homecoming week than in the past years. But, on the other hand, Capuano worries that it isn’t enough of an incentive and that it is “not doing as much as we hope.” On behalf of the members in student leadership, who plan most spirit-based activities, Capuano hopes that “students will be more encouraged to participate and be less ashamed of showing school spirit.”
Student leadership is currently planning a Halloween spirit week and other Halloween-themed activities, as well as a holiday spirit week and corresponding activities that they hope everyone will participate in!