Students feel like their school is "Number One" when they sense a strong attachment - a feeling of belonging to something SPECIAL. The school with the most "spirit" is not necessarily the one with the loudest pep rallies, or the most championship teams, or the most posters in the gym at game time. But rather, the most spirited school is the one that has the largest percentage of students who feel like they belong, like it's their school, too. The challenge of advisers and student leaders, as they begin another school year,--- perhaps their most significant challenge, is to plan as many ways as possible for ALL students at their school to become involved and thereby develop positive feelings about themselves and their school.
America's most popular resource for ways to improve school spirit is the revised (5th edition) of Spirit Works...Turn It On! More than 100,000 copies are in print. The 5th edition now contains nearly 1,000 specific ideas covering class competition games, pep rally organization, noontime activities, staff appreciation ideas, and fund raising projects. Thousands of schools now use class competition activities as a way to involve large numbers of students. Even though the classes compete in activities that are sometimes hotly contested, they are, in fact, playing together. So when it comes time for them to act as a unified student body, they do so with pride and enthusiasm.
