Congratulations to the Jefferson C-123 School, a small rural
school without football, who holds an indoor homecoming.
Students learn to design, create and complete a float that
will fit through the gym door and meet the theme, decided on by a student
group, for homecoming. They create a poster
and participate in theme activities all week.
There are trivia questions daily that each class may
collaborate with their teacher sponsors to answer. They are not to use outside resources. Some questions are academic in nature:
usually covering the core classes, others are trivia related to school
history. The winning class is allowed to
lead the lunch line, behind royalty on Friday which is banquet day.
Students learn to work with their whole class to go through
the complete process of “building” the class float and poster projects to meet
a theme and spec of a judges scoring guide.
Their teachers work with the class to complete these activities. This is work on a different level than the
classroom work where teachers are their “bosses”. The student gets to work alongside their “bosses”. The project begins with the designing, planning
and ordering of materials. The students may work on these projects outside of
class the month before homecoming. This
is done in some parents shop or garage. They then have one school day to bring
the projects to the school and complete them within the school day. Either
parents or teachers supervise these out of school activities. These projects are judged by a group of
outside people, usually including an art teacher or artist, and some retired
teachers and community members.
Students learn to respect their classmates’ unique abilities
that may not be apparent in the structured classroom. They may discover that the student who
struggles in language arts is skilled with wood and other building tools. The quiet student who has all the questions
in math class is a wonderful artist or another student excels at problem
solving. The student who can accurately
measure a required piece may not be the same student who comes up with the fix
needed to make the project work together.
The student who has no physical building skills may be the one to create
the lettering for float theme.
Even the king and queen coronation is many times a surprise. The school is a k-12 in one building. Students 7-12 may vote on the king and
queen. Sometimes the winners are not the
most popular or beautiful, but the student who takes time to talk to that 7th
grader who is struggling. It may be the
student who makes a habit of smiling at everyone they see including those lowly
junior high students every day. It may
be the senior who rides the bus and reads to the third grader on the hour long
bus ride. Other students notice this
kind of behavior.
Congratulations to the Jefferson students, staff and
community for creating another outstanding homecoming.
