What Christmas In July Taught Me About School Traditions

This year marked the seventeenth year that my Dad's side of the family has spent a week together at a lake in Minnesota.  Like many traditions, it has simple roots.  My dad's family camped at Widow Lake when he was a kid and my grandmother thought it would be a good thing to do again.  There are fifty people on my Dad's side of the family, so holidays are a bit crazy with all of our schedules.  My grandmother did not like how rushed Christmas became, so after a few years of going to Widow Lake, she suggested we celebrate Christmas while we were there.  We still celebrate in December, but that time is only for family time.  All presents are exchanged at the lake.  Due to schedule conflicts, the selling of the resort and financial issues, we are now on our fourth lake.  The location and activities may change (we are after all getting older and our bodies cannot endure the amount of water skiing, tubing and knee boarding we used to do), but the bonding time and family stories continue.  It is one week during the year that my whole family looks forward to with great excitement.  I was in sixth grade when we starting this tradition and this year I went to the lake with my husband.

What school traditions do you look forward to each year?  More importantly, what school traditions do your students look forward to?  When I taught in Alaska, we had Fries Friday (parents would make french fries out of our school grown potatoes), All School Hikes in the Fall and Spring and a 5K Race at the end of the year.  These were all events that our students and staff looked forward to each year.

Traditions do not need to be complicated.  They simply need to be something that people look forward to each year.  It could be a field trip, a unit of study, a school activity, a special day or an assembly.  My school cut elementary music a few years ago and I am still working on getting my students excited about music.  My goal this year is to continue things from last year and to start even more traditions this year.  Imagine the power if students and staff were constantly excited and looking forward to the next event or activity.  Traditions are a way to build this excitement.