SJHHS’ First “What If Week”
“What If Week” began on Monday January 13, starting off with the question, “What if bullying didn’t exist?” Students were asked to wear blue and spread kindness throughout the day. Some students are seen in this photo, during lunch, expressing their kindness with companionship.
February 22, 2017
For the first time ever at SJHHS, the awareness week “What If Week” promoted unity and love in the school community. The week of February 13-16 hosted a variety of events created by ASB to bring the school together.
Everyday of the week there was a different color dress up day. Promotional videos were also posted on social media to advertise the overall purpose of the week.
Monday: blue for “What If There Was No Bullying?”
Tuesday: red for “What If No One Did drugs?”
Wednesday: purple for “What If Suicide Was Prevented?”
Thursday: green for “What If We Were Kind To The Earth?”
The ASB commissioners of activities in charge of “What If Week” are sophomores Olivia Huff and Raquel Boatman and junior Madison Bowen.
“We want to make these topics something that people aren’t scared of anymore. We want to make it something you should acknowledge,” Bowen said. We are just trying to make a week where everyone learns to love each other in the community and in the school. — Madison Bowen
“What If Week” is meant to gather SJHHS as a community of students and staff who can openly discuss “taboo” topics such as suicide or drugs.
Bowen said, “We are just trying to make a week where everyone learns to love each other in the community and in the school.”
The week was not just dress up days, but there were also candy grams sold for 50 cents in the quad and hand delivered during second period tutorial on Thursday. A compliment wall was hung up in the quad as well for everyone to write nice words or phrases to encourage others on campus.
Huff said, “One of our main goals for this week was to not only show people what these things mean, but why we should be supporting them.”
To further the atmosphere of being open about the week’s focus topics, teachers were encouraged to talk in tutorial to their students about bullying, drugs, suicide, and the environment.
SJHHS is not the first school to host “What If Week”; others schools in the district, like DHHS, and further away, like Esperanza High School, have also joined in.
“A lot of other schools do it and we kind of just want to make it a week that people start to recognize because the topics that we are talking about are pretty indepth things that students at our school should understand,” Huff said.
ASB also hoped to teach the school the meaning behind RFTB and the new BRAND logo that is a part of WASC.
Following the concept of Riding For The Brand, “What If Week” was designed to remind students and staff alike what it truly means to unify together.
Boatman said, “I think it’s just to bring our school closer together because I feel like sometimes we can all get caught up in popularity. So ‘What If Week’ is just a week to bring everyone closer together as one school.”
