The rain may have been falling outside on Halloween this year but that was no obstacle for Jenison Junior High Student Congress and their Halloween festivities!Student Congress faculty advisers Kevin Fales and Mallory DeFouw oversee the leadership of the students as they plan and execute a fun event for the entire school. “The kids involved with Student Congress are in charge of planning games that get lots of kids involved. Our members pick up the materials needed for the assembly and during the assembly they are in charge of running each event. They make sure each event goes smoothly and we have some students help explain the events with the microphone while others demonstrate how the game works.” says Mr Fales.
“As advisers we help guide the kids to what games have worked in the past. We help the kids realize what materials are needed to run each event. During the assembly we guide the kids so it runs smoothly.”
There are a lot of activities throughout the day including the opportunity for students to express themselves with their favorite costumes! Mr Fales adds, “We encourage our kids to dress up and have lots of fun celebrating such a fun day. During both lunches the teachers judge costumes. The categories range from cutest to scariest. The last two hours of the day our JJHS Student Congress lead the assembly. We plan out fun games that get the maximum number of students involved. We play music and get the gym rocking!”
To encourages some healthy competition, costumes are judged by the staff members each lunch. “We ask all staff to come down half way through their lunches grab a ballot, walk around to all the categories and pick the favorites. It’s a lot of fun to see all the creativity today, we usually get some awesome group costumes, really scary ones, and other great winners! I tally up the ballots and we announce the winners during the assembly by calling them down to the center of the gym. Each winner gets a large bag of candy….we had a lot of candy brought in this year from our student congress members so they got a pretty stuffed bag this year!”
“It’s a long stretch of serious hard work when starting school until this assembly. This allows kids to take small break from tough academic work and have some fun. Kids pair up and plan costumes together, get excited in the halls when they see a peers excellent creativity on costumes, and cheer each other on during the games played. We usually have students cheering for kids they never knew walked these halls and might make a few new friends today because they found a common interest, etc. The student congress members get to see their hard work and planning pay off while everyone is having a good time participating in the games they planned and gathered supplies for. Over the years we have found that this is a nice bridge from parading the halls in elementary school, to still wanting to be kids and have fun on Halloween at school. Kids are well behaved, yet excited for this opportunity to compete in a friendly competition all while being dressed up! Teachers love dressing up too! We usually talk over lunch about what we will dress as, and it’s a good time for everyone!” – Mrs DeFouw
