Empty Pep

I have pep rally baggage. Not a suitcase full, not even a tote bag. Just a casual, medium size hand bag. Think Vera Bradley's Betsy. In some faded old black pattern. Maybe the one with chicken eggs. Small bag, from years ago, often forgotten, but still in the back of my closet.

The baggage is empty. And that is my pep rally problem. I have no community spirit. Specifically, I have no school spirit. I skipped pep rallies in high school; college football games were about the food, not the score; and I never went to a college (or high school) basketball game. It is not that I hope my team/ school/ community loses. I just don't care enough to see them win.

And so, with this long drawn out written therapy session over, I will tell you my interpretation of yesterday's pep rally:

1. The 4th and 5th graders should have been dismissed the moment they started acting like hooligans.

2. Students need a greater understanding of why we have pep rallies. There is no sports game. We did not win some major competition. So why would the average student care about who the SCA reps are in the other classrooms?

3. If I am going to preach about "what should be done" - we should have some sort of school wide activity; we should have upper grade students act as "leaders" to the lower grades during the school song and the school cheer - I should be willing to initiate action. But I am not. I like my quilted chicken egg purse, and I am not ready to part with it yet.

Chants, Swearing, and Threats

That describes an elementary school pep rally.

What? You've never been to one? Really? How can that be?

We start every year with a pep rally run by our SCA. We swear in our new SCA classroom representatives and do some school-wide chants to promote school spirit.

This year's should have taken place a couple of weeks ago, but it had to be postponed after we lost power for most of the day and the fire alarm randomly went off requiring a visit from the fire department. So, it was the end of the fifth week before we had our 'start-of-the-school-year' pep rally.

We have it at the end of the day on a Friday. Not surprisingly it's hard to get the kids to behave. One of the teachers in charge threatened to send the fourth and fifth grades back to their rooms if they couldn't behave. I'd have happily taken my class.

Call me a grinch, say I have no school spirit, but I could do without elementary school pep rallies.