Students Show that It Pays to Recycle

By Brooke Stevenson

    Seymour High School was recently named the regional winner of the Football Town USA High School Football Challenge that is sponsored by Coca-Cola and Walmart.
    The challenge included students promoting school spirit, community involvement and recycling at the school.
    Faculty members at the school were informed about a week and a half ago that the students had won the challenge, along with the $2,500 that was given for first place.
    For part of the challenge students made a display at Walmart that featured Seymour High School and promoted Walmart, Coca-Cola, football and recycling that was in place at the store for six weeks.
    “The cheerleaders went down to Walmart in their cheerleading attire and paraded into the store with a pep rally and ended up at the display that we made,” said Seymour High School art teacher Tami McCroskey.
    McCroskey, as well as Seymour High technology and computer teacher Ron Blaydes, orchestrated the students’ efforts in the challenge.
    A scrapbook and DVD were also made to chronicle all of the students’ efforts in recycling, community involvement and school spirit.
      Presentations were given during each quarter at football games by students with signs that emphasized the letter “R” such as, “Seymour teams Realize that Rolling back prices and drinking the Real thing and Recycling helps up Reach our goal.”
    Art students were also involved with the challenge by showcasing all of the different ways that the school recycles, including recycled paper boxes in each teacher’s classroom and recycling bins outside that school for cardboard and newspaper that are accessible to everyone in the community.
    The end of the school’s DVD happened to be during the week of homecoming events while students were dressed up on decade day. Many of the students who were dressed up in vintage clothing sang the early 1970s Coke jingle, “I'd Like to Give the World a Coke.”
    “The DVD showed one part of the song with the kids in the cafeteria being goofy and it ended up with the actual chorus taking that song in about 20 minutes and turning it into the most beautiful harmonized song you could here,” McCroskey said.
    She added that the challenge was a joint involvement with the Seymour High School chorus, cheerleaders, art club, technology class, news team and Mr. Blaydes, who compiled the DVD.     
    “It was just endless the number of kids we had doing different things to promote this,” McCroskey said. “But, our student photographer Kimberly Ricker was really wonderful.
    “She went around and took all of the pictures we used to make the scrap book.”
    Seymour High School Principal Greg Clark will more than likely use most of the $2,500 prize money toward new computers in the school library, and then funnel the rest into school clubs and organizations that participated in the challenge, said McCroskey.
    “It’s all for the kids and they did a great job,” she added. “Mr. Blaydes and I just orchestrated everything; the kids were the ones that did it.”