Having school spirit can have multiple benefits: achieving academic success, building social skills and even helping students in becoming happier.  In an article “Survey Shows Students With School Spirit Are Top Achievers” by ‘NFHS’[National Federation of State High School Associations], NFHS addresses how school spirit can benefit students academically.

“In addition to showing support for their school, high school students with “school spirit” perform better academically,” ‘NFHS’ said. “ The research attempted to discover how school spirit is connected to the way high school students learn, lead and grow.”   

Showing school spirit can also improve your social skills. If students have no pride for their school they might pass up an opportunity to talk or meet someone and make a real connection with them. Having social skills, being able to talk and communicate with people, is extremely important, especially in high school. In the same article, NFHS also talks about how important school spirit is in regards to social and civic payoff, meaning helping everyone and making everyone happy.

“[Students with school spirit are] more engaged in social and civic matter, ard are happier in general than their less-spirited peers,” NFHS said.

Another benefit of having school spirit is that spirited students are happier and more outgoing than students that do not have as much school spirit. In the article “FAREWELL: There’s more to school spirit than just sports” by ‘The Daily Nebraskan’, the article explains how students are happier and more confident just because of school spirit.

“More than 70 percent of students who had a high level of school spirit were more confident, happier, more involved in their communities and more likely to be leaders, according to the same poll,” ‘The Daily Nebraskan’ said. “One of the principals interviewed said school spirit ‘is the heartbeat of the school’ and can ‘make or break a school’.”

There are numerous different reasons why people should show support for their school including academic, social, and even emotional reasons. In my opinion, it just adds to the great memory of high school. It adds to the fun and memories that I would love to look back on when I get older.  I want to be able to look back on my high school years and know that I had a lot of pride for my school.

School spirit can also unite students and make their high school year more exciting. In the article “Why School Spirit Is So Important” by Lisa Sugarman, she explains how spirit makes high school years more memorable.

“Spirit days united the geeks and the jocks and the drama kids and the musicians and the art kids because it created harmony. It gave us a common goal. And it even gave us a reason to embrace the teachers we didn’t like, because they were usually the ones who revealed a totally different side of themselves when they got to show off their creative, spirited side. It leveled the playing field.” Sugarman said. “In the end, it makes the time we all spend together, day in and day out for all those years, more exciting and more memorable.”

There are multiple different ways to show more school spirit. Students can participate in the multiple spirit weeks that go on at school. Students can also increase their school spirit by going to more sports games, or even joining a club. Wakefield offers many different clubs and sports for students to join.   

If everyone at Wakefield had more spirit, it would benefit many different things in the school. There would be more participation, which would make it more fun to go to school led activities. There would also be more enthusiasm in the stands; giving the sports teams the confidence to win more games. There might even be so much spirit that people at different schools would be wishing that they went to Wakefield.