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Date: 4/7/2020
SOUTHWICK – Despite the current uncertain times, the entire Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School District community is coming together to share positivity as a part of its Ram Strong activities.
Mike Pescitelli, the assistant principal at Southwick Regional School, said the entire Ram Strong program initially came from a collaboration between students and class advisors in the first week of the shutdown.
“Our class officers from grades 9 to 11 and the advisors came together to discuss some options right within the first week of being closed.” he said, “The intent there was to include the entire community from Woodland to Southwick Regional and even stakeholders like the police department and anyone that wanted to participate.”
One of the activities involved one of the students creating a ram logo and posting it online for the younger students to color. “The little kids at Woodland and Powder Mill colored them in and posted them in their windows just to be able to see how positive this one activity really could be,” Pescitelli said.
Despite the current isolation, he said that there has been an outpouring of positivity from the entire community. “One particular student wanted to share a positive message with all the staff and said how positive her experience has been at Southwick Regional and she cares about all of her teachers. She wanted them to know that she’s thinking of them and that was a really uplifting message to get this week,” he said.
Pescitelli added that several of the high school’s clubs are still meeting remotely online. “We have a board game club that meets every week and that teacher has made it happen so that they are still playing some remote games where they can still participate even though we’re not in school,” he said.
One of the ways the district celebrated its school was its spirit week that wrapped up on April 3. He explained that each day the students participated in a different activity online.
Monday was a home fashion show, Tuesday was Tik Tok Tuesday, during which students sent in clips recreating some of their favorite Tik Toks. Wednesday was an online wave, on Thursday students posted a short clip from their favorite movie, and Friday was Freaky Friday, during which students sent in clips of them swapping out with their family members.
Pescitelli said that it’s been uplifting to him to see the students try to keep a positive attitude while they are out of school. “It’s not a good situation anywhere and we’d much rather be in school but the idea that they’re trying to be as positive as they can be, taking care of themselves and our community is really good.”