Clubs: one of the most important components of our campus culture. They add vibrant color to any school day by allowing students to express themselves in ways that they generally can’t during class. Without them, our school would be dull and lifeless, a place that students have little-to-no personal incentive to attend. When the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the country, it made it more difficult for clubs to yield member engagement. With schools closed and Zoom calls being the new standard, clubs cannot hold in-person meetings like they used to. Despite this, many ACHS clubs have persevered, discovering creative ways to keep their membership alive and thriving.
KEY CLUB: Service at Our Fingertips
Arguably the biggest club on campus, Key Club is a club revolving around--not keys--but volunteer opportunities. It’s a club dedicated to helping students reach that sweet graduation requirement of 40 volunteer hours (and maybe more!), with new events offered every meeting for students to sign-up at. However, with quarantine, in-person opportunities are limited and even non-existent in most cases. To get over this roadblock, Key Club has begun offering methods to easily gain hours at home.
One of these methods involves a website called Freerice. It’s a free-to-play game (with a mobile version too) by the UN World Food Programme that allows users to play multiple-choice quizzes on various school subjects. The best part? With each correct answer, Freerice donates 5 grains of rice to families and countries in need. The game has an option to create groups in which you can compete with others to donate the most rice, which adds to your group’s overall amount of rice grains donated. Our school’s Key Club, alongside other Key Clubs in our division, Division 8, have banded together in a Freerice group, and members can join via entering a simple code. At the end of each month, members can fill out a form designated for Freerice, earning their well-deserved hours.
Although Freerice is an option for those staying home, there is also an opportunity for Key Clubbers to still volunteer in-person: Food Distribution. This is a recurring event in which a limited amount of members can sign-up due to restrictions caused by the pandemic. Volunteers would meet up at the AC Food Pantry to pack bags of non-perishables with the help of the AC Kiwanis. Then, everyone would head over to the Boys & Girls Club building, where they would give away these bags to families in need. This event has made a profound impact in AC--in fact, it can be gone as far to say that this event embodies the strength of our community.
Kyla Mendoza, one of the Vice Presidents of Key Club, elaborates on this:
“For the past few years that I’ve helped at the Food Pantry, it’s never been empty, so at the start of the summer when we got that email about its barren state, for me it was like a wake-up call that a lot more people are in need right now. The fact that the pantry is still able to provide for families in AC twice a month is impressive. The pantry relies on donations from the community, so it’s AC that’s supporting AC.”
ACADEMIC DECATHLON: Bonds Unwavering, 6-Feet Apart
Another club that has made a remarkable mark at ACHS is the Academic Decathlon, AcaDec for short. The club revolves around a scholastic competition in which students are tested on their knowledge regarding a specific topic. Each year, the topic is different (this year, the topic is the Cold War), and over the course of several months, students in this club must study material connected to said-topic. With students split up into three categories based on their GPA (Honors, Scholastics, and Varsity), just about anyone can apply even if they aren’t a straight-A student.
Before quarantine struck, AcaDec would meet up three days a week after-school, including a lunch meeting on Fridays. During this time, students would have a quiet environment to study and talk amongst themselves. It wasn’t just an ordinary study hall though, and the AcaDec Treasurer, Kyla Cansino, puts emphasis on this, saying,
“Sometimes we would share snacks or leftover bags of chips from our lunch with each other and whisper jokes to each other during study time. Sometimes someone would start laughing aloud and everyone joins--and these meetings don't feel so stressful, but rather a nice study session with friends.”
In quarantine, AcaDec still found ways to meet up--virtually, of course. The club would host Zoom calls in the late afternoon, and rather than studying, they would partake in review sessions instead. Additionally, the members of this club do constant check-ins with each other via Groupme and a designated Discord server. Even with quarantine present, the Academic Decathlon will still go on this year, with adjustments such as online tests made to accommodate for the lack of in-person meetups.
One notable trait about this club is that the members have closely-knit friendships with one another. As said previously, it’s not just a study hall personified as a club; many of their meetings, if not all of them, have resulted in bonds growing stronger. With in-person meetings no longer being an option, it has been difficult to establish the aforementioned.
“There's a distinct difference between texting each other compared to speaking faced to face,” Cansino said, “We can't do team bonds as easily, because anyone is free to stay on mute the whole time.”
Despite this dilemma, the members of AcaDec are still adamantly striving to recreate the wholesome experiences they’ve shared pre-quarantine. Many members have participated in calls outside of meetings in which they play games like Dungeons and Dragons and Minecraft together. Even if these experiences aren’t as authentic, Cansino reassures that they still “goof around with each other and see what shenanigans we can get into”.
ROBOTICS CLUB: Technology at a Distance
Robotics Club is a club that focuses on not only robotics, but other technology-related things, such as software/web development, 3D-printing, and game design. The club prides itself on teaching its members the basics, with a plethora of resources they can use to get started. For those who are more experienced, you can utilize the club to start technological projects and get assistance on it. Overall, it’s a club with members passionate about coding, and they can also be exposed to grand opportunities revolving around the world of technology.
When there was still in-person learning, a majority of the club’s meeting time was spent after-school, in which teams of students would practice working with Linkbots: small robots that are specifically made to engage student-learning. As mentioned, students would also work on projects and get help from others. Once a week during lunch, Robotics Club would host a meeting for its members, where the officers would give out announcements and present new opportunities to them.
Kyle De Leon, one of the club’s Vice Presidents, recalls what the meetings were like:
“All of our meetings are really laid back, and we try our hardest not to put any crazy pressure on our members.”
Even in quarantine, the club is still thriving by continuing to teach their members in a way similar to how they were teaching before. During lunch hours, the club members participate in Discord calls where they would work on their own programming projects and get input from one another. The club also hosts weekly workshops.
“The current topic is programming in Python,” Leon said, “but we plan to have months centered around 3D design, Game Design, Web Design, etc.” With these calls, it’s certain that quarantine won’t stop this club’s hunger for knowledge and growth.
WE CHARITY: Staying Together Apart
Lastly, WE Charity is a club that is a part of an international organization of the same name. The organization consists of multiple branches, and this club is specifically a part of their WE School branch. The club’s goal is to be of service to people by utilizing their talents and enabling young leaders to initiate local change, as well as making strides to promote empathy, compassion, and well-being.
Before quarantine, the club would engage in meaningful conversations about pressing issues, such as natural disasters, poverty in different countries, homelessness, and advocating for the arts. They would then collectively vote on what topics and events they wanted to focus on, and thus created committees to develop plans for action. Even during the pandemic, WE Charity is continuing to stay proactive about these issues. For one, they’ve established a summer program for their members in order to maintain activity, as well as a group chat to check-in with each other. Alongside this program, the club has sent out projects that its members can get involved with. In particular, some of the projects include persuading the local school board to stop indirectly hurting the arts as well as convincing the city to be more environmentally conscious. The current project gives members the opportunity to get their art published in a book, which will be sold in order to raise funds for student scholarships.
Like every club, WE Charity had to learn how to adapt to this new era. They had to consider COVID-19 restrictions when brainstorming ideas, and modified those ideas accordingly. For example, the club had planned out a Blood Drive on-campus, but with quarantine, they have to find alternative ways to host it while keeping safety protocols a priority. They have still yet to figure out what they want their Zoom club meetings to be like. Much like their pre-quarantine meetings, they plan for their meetings to still be personal and engaging. In order to expand their outreach, WE Charity will utilize social media more to interact with the local community. Despite all of these restrictions, the club is dead set on establishing positive change.
Clubs versus quarantine, and it’s clear that clubs are winning the bout. Even if the presence of COVID-19 has drastically changed the way we live, these clubs alongside many others won’t let this pandemic bound them with unforgiving chains. With Club Rush concluded, many clubs already or plan to have their first meeting, whether it be on Zoom or another way of communication. Although it may not replicate the atmosphere of in-person meetings, I highly encourage you all to still attend the clubs that you love and support the officers that have worked diligently to keep giving you an outlet to express yourselves in a school environment. So get on your devices and join that meeting call!
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