School Spirit Award winner: Burnaby South Secondary
On the proud occasion of the Head of the Class’s 18th birthday, one in which our first group of student-athletes born in the year 2000 have donned cap and gown for commencement ceremonies across the province, we decided it was time to begin a new tradition.
The School Spirit Award is self-explanatory, yet on the road to determining which high school in B.C. had the best of this intangible quality, something became very apparent.
The new generation has learned how to make student body engagement an instant-and-powerful force through use of social media.
And nowhere in the province is that more apparent than at our winning school, Burnaby South Secondary, and its ever-proud Rebels athletic nation.
Walk into the gym and the first thing you see is #gorebels painted on their hardwood floor.
When the voting period opened earlier this spring for the four schools selected as finalists, Burnaby South’s Rebels Athletic Crew (RAC) super-charged its student body through the clever use of social media, turning its campaign into a runaway victory.
“It’s extremely empowering to know that as a high school student, we have so much power in the palm of our hands through our cellphones,”says RAC member Dewa Zafar, a senior who doesn’t play on any of the school’s sports teams, but has loved the camaraderie that comes from helping bring her high school community closer together.
“The thought that we can send out tweets and get hundreds of students to meet because we asked them? That is powerful and these are the greatest times we will have in high school.”
RAC, created by Burnaby South athletic director Robbie Puni, has become such a positive force at the school that it boasts some 52 members, not all athletes, who use social media to report and inform on every sports team at the school.
“Every game from ultimate Frisbee to Grade 8 rugby,” says Hadie Honardoust, a member of the senior boys basketball team who has loved his time in RAC. “It has been amazing to watch how all of this has brought our entire school closer together.”
Adds Zafar: “You get joy in the classroom with your text books, but you get another kind as well when you are sitting in the bleachers cheering on your school and knowing that because of the RAC, we have all gotten together for a common reason.” The pep rally has grown up. And Burnaby South is the pioneer, the one with the blueprint for maximizing this infectious intangible known as school spirit.