The AW11 assembly was implemented to give students a reason to want to achieve better things and make our school a better place. At the assembly, there are activities for the students to do to compete with other students/grade levels. These activities are things like a mattress relay, tug-of-war, and musical chairs. We do these activities because it can bring people together and it is easy to include anybody that is interested in participating. However, the assembly is also to recognize the ones who have truly gone above and beyond in our school.

This idea of people being recognized by our school is greatly appreciated by students like 10th grader Jayla who stated, “It gives us the opportunity to recognize the people who have been doing good in our school.”

This is truly one of the main ideas behind the AW11 assembly: recognizing those who are true leaders. Another concept that the AW11 assembly does correctly is giving students the opportunity to work towards something greater. This is exactly how 10th grader Trent felt. “(AW11) helps people work towards something better by giving you a goal,” he stated. Doing this gives the students a reason to go above and beyond, and to be a truly good person.

Despite this, some students believe it doesn’t always work as intended.

“The whole thing feels like a popularity contest,” junior Jinsley said. This is a problem that a lot of people have with the process, because the point of it is to recognize the ones who haven’t been noticed, not the ones everybody knows.

Another problem that students have, is that the place where it is held, the gym, can get very uncomfortable when that many people are in it.

“When you have the whole school in the gym it can get really hot,” student Kyimere said. I mean, why would you want to be in a place where you are sweating all the time until you leave after an entire hour?

The AW11 assembly has good intentions by recognizing students, but it goes about it all wrong by making people not even want to come all together.