By MARGOT MOHSBERG, Staff Writer, The
Capital
While many students
were enjoying their last days of summer vacation, 120 Annapolis High School
students volunteered to spend two days in August in Crownsville learning
how to be role models to their fellow students in the coming year.
At an overnight gathering on Aug. 26 and 27 at the
Arlington Echo Outdoor Education Center, the students prepared for TEAM
Days an all-day event, held by the school on Sept. 15 and
29 at Sandy Point State Park, to help kick off the year on a positive note.
During TEAM Days (Together Everyone Achieves More)
student leaders will guide 400 students through activities aimed at teaching
them how to be team players, find as well as serve as role models and care
for the environment.
"We get lots out of these kids," said Principal Joyce
Smith. "You've got people who are willing to work and you're silly if you
don't use it. And they love it."
During the retreat at Arlington Echo, the students
did a dry run of the TEAM day agenda to find out if the planned schedule
proceeded smoothly and the workshops that they devised last spring and
summer made sense. In an effort to teach the 400 students to work together,
they are divided up into teams and given a color. The teams are then taught
cheer-like songs meant to build team pride.
"The Red Group rocks the house. And when the red
group rocks the house, we rock it all the way down," one song went.
The
teams and their team leaders then participate together in the day's activities.
Activities during the day include defining what qualities
make a role model and determining who that role model might be, creating
a quilt with an environmental theme, and for exercise, country line dancing.
"We play music that many of them are not familiar
with, like country from many years back, to purposely put them a little
off balance. We try to create a little bit of stress so they will want
to work together," Mrs. Smith said.
"We want to teach them to work under stress with
people and still work with a courteous attitude."
The main goal is getting the students familiar with
each other.
"Hopefully, on Monday morning, when they bump into
each other in the hall accidentally, instead of starting a fight, they
will say, 'Hey, I remember you from TEAM Day,"' said Mrs. Smith, who started
the program in 1994.
Leesy Soffer, 15, of Hunt Meadow, attributed much
of the school's spirit to programs like TEAM Day. She said the programs
really help students work together, both inside and outside the classroom.
"They create unity. In school now, no one is ever like, 'Eww, I don't want
to work with you.' Everyone works together," she said.
Miss Soffer became a team leader for the first time
this year. She said she did it because she had such a good time as a TEAM
Day participant last year.
"My brother was also a team leader and he said it's
so much fun. And it was. It's a really great program," she said.
And although dancing to the oldies was supposed to
make the students a little uneasy, Miss Soffer said she liked that the
best.
"We learned how to polka and that was a lot of fun,"
she said.