Grayslake North students and staff are trying to find a way to get everyone more involved in what is happening around the school in a movement called #The Whole Knight.
#The Whole Knight is a new way to get students involved with after school sports and other events around the school
“We decided to start this thing called #TheWholeKnight, the idea of rounding out the school and the students and the faculty and just seeing students outside of just where you see them in the classroom,” said fine arts department chair Mark Lard.
The idea of #The Whole Knight is to get everyone, including the faculty, more involved with school activities and to support school teams. When going to an event, students and staff can post a hashtag to Twitter with a picture of themselves at the event. Those people then get placed into a raffle where they could get picked to win a prize.
“We give out gift cards, T-shirts and stickers. We give out gift cards a lot though,” said NLCC panal member Brittany Grim.
Another reason for doing this is because they think it is important to showcase every sport and activity the school has. The school has a wide range of sports and clubs going on that should all be recognized.
“At almost every school, basketball and football are huge draws and get a lot of people there, whereas tennis and volleyball and all these other great sports don’t get huge crowds,” Lard said.
Along with that, #The Whole Knight also breaks the usual social normality of just going to support the thing you play.
“I feel like not many schools have done this. It’s usually just if you’re on the baseball team, you go to the baseball games, softball goes to softball. But I think it’s cool that we show that everyone can go to everyone’s games,” said a student on the NLCC panel Shannon Leahy.
After starting the hashtag, they have seen a massive improvement with the atmosphere of games and students being supportive of others.
“I think there is definitely more people going to games and different plays and activities at school,” Grim said.
Some teams no longer go straight home after their game. They might like to stay and watch another team play after them. It is also a great feeling for students to know more people are there to support and watch them.
“I think it’s cool that they are spending their time like that when they could be going home, but they are spending all this time seeing their friends or even not their friends playing,” Leahy said.
Going to school events is supposed to be a positive thing for everyone, but it can be hard to get people to go. One person with the idea to go to an event can continue a chain of people to follow them, which is the goal of #The Whole Knight.