SCA’s Friday challenges bring levity during virtual learning
Liberty Harrison | staff writer
Chloe Beal, freshman, poses here in her ugly holiday sweater, as part of the virtual SCA December ‘Friday Challenges’. Due to distance learning students now take part in SCA events by sharing pictures of their participation through social media.
For the month of December the SCA decided to build their Friday Challenges around a traditional wintertime amusement – wearing tacky holiday sweaters.
Each Friday of December until winter break, students were invited to wear their holiday sweater, and share pictures of it with the SCA and student body by tagging their twitter and instagram accounts, @lchs_sca and lchssca respectively.
With students out of school during the pandemic the SCA has been using social media to try to bring the school community together. Friday Challenges were but one of many events for students to participate in.
The idea began with the spirit committee listing what spirit events were successful in previous years and then brainstorming new ideas. Erika Maliska, senior and member of the SCA wrote, “We [then] took that list and debated on what we thought would be doable in distance learning and we voted on which we thought were the best!”
Due to distance learning, the SCA has experienced several new obstacles in regards to their “Friday Challenges.”
Maliska wrote about current challenges faced by the SCA. “Student participation is a big one. Students have to take a picture, post it on social media and tag us, or use the portal in Schoology to post pictures.”
The SCA tracks participation rates and the change from counting who participated in person to counting who participated virtually has posed extra obstacles that have seemed to deter some students from participating.
“The student participation definitely is not how it used to be when we were going to school in person,” Maliska wrote. “I believe that a big factor of student participation is actually going to school in your outfit and having all of your friends, classmates, and teachers see.”
Recording participation virtually has also complicated the process of counting for the SCA.
“All I can vouch for are my friends who participated, but forgot to post a picture and tag the SCA on the day of the event,” wrote Maliska. “But it is hard to say how many people participated.”
Not being able to interact in person has also negatively affected other SCA activities.
“It has been difficult to build enthusiasm without using our traditional hype events,” Maliska wrote. “Without having the daily in person interactions in a normal school year we didn’t anticipate increasing school spirit. Rather we just want this to be something fun students can do with their friends should they like to.”
Even with challenges faced by the SCA, they continue to try to provide positive experiences for students.
Regarding December’s Friday Challenges Maliska wrote, “Our goal isn’t to increase holiday spirit but rather to just give people something fun to do during distance learning,”
The challenges provided by the SCA in general have one main goal.
“We hope to bring a little bit of more joy into students’ lives as we are going through a very hard time.” Maliska wrote, “These challenges are supposed to be enjoyable and fun for students.”
