Student activities director Julie Harris has one primary goal this month: to get students involved in clubs. According to the National Center for Education Sciences, recent research shows that students participating in extracurriculars can increase school spirit and attachment and decrease school failure and drop-outs.
“We’re promoting clubs because we want everybody to join a club and we want that because we really want students to get involved in something at school,” Mrs. Harris said. “There are kids that are not athletically inclined or have a hobby somewhere else like art or theatre or foreign language.”
The variety of clubs at RHS ranges from Anime Club to Business Professionals of America, allowing students to choose what clubs they want to invest their time into. This year there are four new clubs: Investment Club, Culture Club, American Sign Language Club and Congressional Award Club which Harris herself sponsors.
“Pranita Balusu won a Congressional Medal and went to Washington D.C. to receive it this summer and its given out to teens who go above and beyond in community service and such,” Mrs. Harris said. “She thought it’d be a great idea to publicize the medal so more people from Rochester could receive it and so she decided to make a club to promote that.”
The club fair, which was on Friday, September 13 gave people the opportunity to explore the different clubs available and sign up for them. However, students can also discover what club they’re interested in through the Student Activities webpage run by Mrs. Harris.
“We just want everybody to find something and have a place to make new friends and have a place to hang out with them,” Harris said. “So we promote clubs throughout the whole month of September.”
