By: Shauna Sigren, September 7th, 2017

In the beginning of every school year at Middleboro High School, principal Paul Branagan puts together a “Welcome Back” Pep Rally for the students returning to high school for another year or just beginning. The 2017 school pep-rally took place September 7th 2017. During the rally the school has opening ceremonies and a special guest speaker. This year MHS brought in Harriet Turk to speak before the school. The guest speaker motivates students and faculty for the exciting school year ahead. This pep rally is intended to welcome students to school and motivate them for the upcoming year ahead.

To start, the MHS band plays upbeat music and the sachem singers beautifully sing the national anthem as the school rises for the pledge of allegiance. Once the entire school is present and attentive, Mr.Branagan will acknowledge the growth of each class and their accomplishments.

He will have each grade rise and move to their designated section on the bleachers to signify the transition of one grade to the next. Once everyone is seated,  Branagan will thank the staff and administrators. Branagan constantly expresses to the school how important it is to get involved with school activities. He asks students to stand if they are doing any clubs, sports, or AP courses to congratulate them. They are applauded before they take a seat.

Finally, a guest motivational speaker will be invited to speak to the school. This school year the speaker that came for the MHS pep-rally was Harriet Turk. She engagingly spoke to the school about the power of mindset and life choices.  

One of her stories was about her son in a full out spider man costume and when he was in that costume he  believed he was spiderman. Harriet said that, “ In highschool we often do this with people. We want everyone to like us,  so we put on a mask and behave a certain way around certain people. And often when we stop we are left confused as to who we really are.”  She wanted to spread the message to be who you want to be and know that not everyone is going to like you for you are. Harriet believed that everyone in the school should be there for eachother and should support one another.. She encouraged everyone to stand up and search for people they didn’t already know to introduce themselves.  

Harriet also wanted to help the school to find confidence in themselves. She had the entire gymnasium repeat a confidence boosting chant, “ I am somebody special. And if you don’t like it, tough! Cause I am, cool enough, smooth enough, and hot enough, (tsssssss)  to be who I wanna be!” she also had students do many activities with the people around them to help them interact and break out of their comfort zones.

To get a sense of what other people might think about the pep rallies at MHS, I interviewed two other students who have been, to see how they felt about the rallies. The first student interviewed was Sarah Greeley. Sarah for the most part she really enjoys the pep rallies because, “ I like the spirit everyone has. But I don’t like how we have to sit on the bleachers the whole time.” Another student I interviewed was Hannah Blais. She loves the school spirit of pep rallies but she feels it has some downsides too. Hannah really likes how the whole school gathers because, “We all come together as one in the pep rally’s, my least favorite thing is like how loud it gets sometimes. I would add like games for us to play.” Maybe next year MHS could consider hosting the event in the auditorium and include some games that really give students the chance to bond with one another.  Overall students and faculty appear to really enjoy the event. The 2017 pep rally seemed to do an incredible job motivating students and getting everyone settled in for the school year.