After winter break, Riverside Brookfield High School kicked off the start of the second semester with a winter pep rally for their students to get them excited for this new year.
The event is planned by the Student Association, and social sciences teacher Angela Ziola is one of the sponsors for SA. When planning for the pep rally, the students in SA and the sponsors begin months before the actual event and a bit after the homecoming pep rally to figure out the ideas and events that will take place.
“We have done the winter pep rally off and on for 10-plus years,” Ziola said. “We started discussion about whether or not we wanted to put in the effort to do this pep rally back in November, and then in the beginning of November, we got it approved by the administration. We then started planning out the order of events, and writing a script, and getting all the supplies, and finding the staff and students to be involved.”
The event is a time for students to come together and cheer for their grade level, making it an exciting and involving time for all.
“Seeing it all come together and how enthusiastic the students feel about planning it is great because they know that even though it’s a lot of work, it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Ziola said. “And so I think just anticipating the fun that we hope that the entire school will have gives it so much more meaning.”
The event includes games, speeches, videos from RBTV about the year, and lots of crowd interaction. Senior Sofia Sanchez, one of the executive board members, explains more about how they use social media.
“We use social media a lot to see games that we think will be fun,” Sanchez said. “We have a lot of supplies from other years, and we kind of like to take inspiration from other people. We’ve gotten videos sent to us from TikTok that people think are fun games.”
SA works starting in November to plan this event with brainstorming ideas, getting the supplies, and getting approval from administrators so they’re able to proceed.
“You have to envision what it’s going to look like and understand that you have to plan something like this minute-by-minute,” Ziola said. “So you have to sort of make some guesses based on experience—‘how long will each part of this pep rally actually take?’ And then also making sure that everyone that you want involved in the rally actually responds and then sees the vision the same way you see it.”
The events at this year’s pep rally included the giant beachball, a game where the grades compete to decorate a human snow man, and performances by multiple different groups such as poms, cheer, and the Dancing Divas.
“I think it’s rewarding,” Sanchez said. “It’s very stressful for a few weeks, and then we finally are at the pep rally, and we see how everyone enjoys it, it’s a really big part of the school year.”
