To my fellow Ames High Students:
Over the four years during which I have attended Ames High School, I have observed a significant shift in culture. When I first walked through the weathered main entrance of the old Ames High School in the fall of 2021, I felt that I was entering a vibrant community of learning and shared experiences. Today, the school’s culture is rife with individualism and discontent. I have heard that few of you are really enjoying your time at Ames High— you are either in a non-stop cycle of exhaustion until you reach the “greener pastures” of the future, or you have already checked out of our education and have little interest in participating in our Ames High community. (If you’re taking time to read the WEB though, you’re clearly doing something right).
Where did the old spirit go? Why does the Ames High environment feel so different than it did four years ago? And how can we recover this dying spirit of Ames High?
The Building Change
The move from the old building into the new high school was the initial catalyst of this cultural change. While the new high school is undoubtedly modern and safe, it lacks the sense of history and community that resonated through the dated brick hallways. Each architectural element of the old building brought out character. I remember the confluence of several hallways at the foot of the old school’s stairway and outside the doors of the old library, where groups of friends caught up in between periods. I remember the brick balconies near the band wing from which my English 9 class rehearsed Romeo and Juliet, the grassy courtyard where students relaxed during their lunch breaks, and the wooden auditorium stage that played host to raucous lunchtime Coffeehouse performances. Mr. Woolery’s multi-tiered and circular Greek theatre of a speech room fostered discussion. The steep walls of the dimly-lit old gymnasium were home to an excitable student body that made their voices heard at athletic events and pep assemblies. Even in the old building’s final year, the long walk from the parking lot past the construction fences into the school ended up contributing to the sense of community— without a quick getaway route during homeroom or lunch, many students ended up staying at school to interact with their peers.
There is no doubt that leaving the old building was necessary for student safety and progress, but it is regrettable that the spirit from the old school didn’t make its way into today’s Ames High. Today, we students evidently aspire to spend as little time interacting with our peers as we possibly can. The new gym doesn’t foster the same atmosphere and the student sections are sparse outside of rivalry games and the playoffs. The classrooms feel empty (attendance has dropped by 6% since 2019) and many of us don’t bother to engage in class discussions. Every upperclassman spends our open periods as far away from the school as possible. The new building has been described as airport-like, which goes beyond just describing its vast spaces— despite all of us that come in and out of the doors each morning, many of us feel like travelers going from stop to stop rather than members of a larger community.
The pandemic certainly exacerbated the impact of the building change, as classes of students had their high school experience fractured and missed out on quintessential Ames High traditions. Losing years in the old building left the past few cohorts of upperclassmen, the torch bearers of the Ames High culture, less equipped to carry on traditions to the next generation.
Clubs and Extracurriculars
The decimation of Ames High’s clubs has accelerated this decline in the sense of community. Four years ago, clubs were thriving at Ames High, with a plethora of activities available for students to join. Each club posted high attendance numbers and the existence of these smaller communities within Ames High fostered connections between students. However, the de facto elimination of homeroom at the start of the 2023-24 school year dealt a massive blow to the survival of clubs at Ames High. With students required to study social and emotional learning curriculum via the RULER program and clubs prohibited during this homeroom time, any hope that clubs could still meet during the school day was pushed aside. This change left our student-led clubs reeling, with many hanging on by strands or becoming defunct altogether. Transportation challenges and outside commitments make it difficult for many of our peers to participate in clubs outside of the school day. Our administrators have cited attendance concerns as the reason for the ban on club meetings during the day, although they have relaxed the standards recently and clubs have been allowed to meet (although only on Thursdays and Fridays).
The waning of club strength has been accompanied by an overall change in attitude towards extracurricular activities. Many of us only wish to participate in activities for the sake of resumé building or abstain from participating at all. While some of us do follow our passions, many of us decide which clubs or organizations to join solely based on our perceptions of “success.” We attempt to quantify success on the basis of awards, qualification for state and national competitions, or recognition for specific accomplishments, but in doing so we drain the meaning and joy from our extracurricular activities. Several of us even pursue activities in which we have little genuine interest to try to add depth to our college applications. We view our out-of-school pursuits as the means to an end rather than as fulfilling activities in their own right— it seems that many of us are only seeking admission to an elite university rather than searching for value in the things that we do.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, clubs could help many of us get more involved in the Ames High community. I know a lot of us don’t want to be at school most of the time and I don’t blame anyone, because Ames High often lacks spaces for creativity, self-expression, and fun. If you feel this way, I challenge you— try out some new clubs or search for unique experiences, and if nothing excites you, then form a new club or organization yourself. Club culture is at its best when everyone feels represented and heard, so as a community, we need to strive towards that ideal again. If it feels like certain spaces at Ames High are missing, don’t wait for them to pop out of thin air. Go and create them. There are more than a thousand kids at Ames High and even if you’re interested in something that you think is niche, there are surely others that share your hobbies or experiences and would be happy to see a new club emerge.
If clubs are to recover at Ames High, we all need to pursue the things which we are passionate about and we must be afforded the freedom to do so. When we find the things that we really care about, the awards, recognition, and success will arrive as secondary reinforcements. Sure, not all of us know exactly what our passions are, and not every club will be the right fit, but trying out new things is a good place to start. A potential revival of clubs can come as limited meeting times during the school day become a possibility again, but effort needs to be put into attending clubs as they attempt to rise from the ashes. This is a potential start of the comeback of communities at Ames High.
A Comeback of Community?
Perhaps I have developed an idealized view of the Ames High community that cannot be realistically pursued. I was an impressionable freshman who looked up to the upperclassmen of my day, students who seemed well-rounded in both their academic and extracurricular pursuits, and who contributed heavily to the school’s culture. We obviously cannot bring back the old building, and we cannot change scheduling aspects such as RULER which are mandated by the school district. Yet you all can make a concerted effort to bring back the Ames High spirit and recapture the community that existed in the past.
I have spent much of my senior year trying to find those places where the old Ames High spirit still exists. While the old building is nothing more than a lingering memory and much of the old zeitgeist is fractured, there are still times when this school comes alive again, from Friday night basketball games to average Tuesdays in the lunchroom. Although I cannot tell you all that there is a specific way to get the most out of the high school experience, I can tell you some ways that I have found amazing communities at Ames High.
Spend time at school, even if you don’t always have a pressing reason to be there. These days most upperclassmen leave during lunch, seminar, and every open period, but I’ve found that staying once in a while allows me to build a sense of community. I always make an effort to stay for lunch and talk to people, and I’ve ended up meeting many new friends or having great conversations with older ones. Everyone has something important to say, and whether I agree with them or not, I’ve learned a lot from my peers’ perspectives, values, and dreams. (And to be honest, getting school lunches every day saves money, plus they’re not even that bad if you just accept them.)
Look for unique experiences or ones that might have gone under your radar. As a self-proclaimed nerd and the worst wannabe basketball player in the 515, I never thought that I’d join an intramural basketball team during my time at Ames High, but I found myself gracing the court in the I-Ball playoffs this February. Sure, I might have hit only a few shots in the whole season, but I discovered an entire community at Ames High that I didn’t know about. I learned to appreciate those winter nights when dozens of students crowd into the gyms to play for nothing more than bragging rights.
Embrace the unexpected. How did I end up being allowed to play a jazz saxophone solo in the middle of an orchestra concert? It’s a long story. But when you get new opportunities, always take them into consideration and let your curiosity lead you places. It’s impossible to plan everything that you will or won’t do in high school but sometimes you’ll end up finding joy in things that you didn’t even know existed.
Don’t spend all of high school mindlessly studying your time away. This is probably the most simple and recycled thing that I could say but I finally believe it to be true. There is nothing more anticlimactic than entering your grades into college applications just to realize that you spent four years of your youth for a few little numbers. I’m not encouraging you all to get bad grades but realize that there is more to Ames High than your classes— go out and engage, find communities, and have a little bit of fun. And put meaningful effort into your courses— participate in discussions, propose new ideas, and look beyond the material, so that you come out with more than just numbers. You don’t want to look back on high school and wonder why it felt like a waste of time.
Keep traditions alive. Realize that the world outside of your phone can be so much more exciting. I don’t care how “nonchalant” you all want to be, please just try to get out of your comfort zone a little bit. Participate in cowbell at assemblies and football games. Dress up for school spirit weeks (as a culprit of not always doing this, I hold my hands up and say there’s no harm in it). Make the “Band Mafia” relevant again. Sign up for the culture fair if you can. Buy tickets for Tucheze and allow this and other Ames traditions to go ahead. Talk to year teachers about traditions from the old building – value their knowledge and their own efforts to build spirit.
This is a letter to all of you with years left at Ames High, but it is also a letter to my past self. I failed to recognize the old building’s underlying history and spirit beneath the facades of dust and time. I hardly participated in school traditions and events as a freshman and sophomore. I limited my participation in clubs and believed that they would take up too much of my time. I studied too much, didn’t have enough fun, and hardly looked up from my textbooks to appreciate the cool friends around me. And yet I don’t have any regrets, because I think that I was still able to experience so much in high school and step out of my comfort zone, especially in the last year or two. To all of you who still have time left in high school, there are experiences to be had and memories to be made. Go find them.
