By Tyler Swartzendruber, Drake Adamson, and Brady Nickel
On Thursday, February 16, SAMS students participated in another session of SAMS Time, a choose-your-activity event that encourages kids to join clubs based on their interests.
The event was once again organized by Ms. Grady, a seventh grade science teacher for Team Gladiators.
“I do it because the kids like to do it and the staff likes to work with them outside of the content that they teach,” she said.
Options included “E-Sports,” “Laser Tag,” “Arts and Crafts,” “Coding Club,” “Paper Football,” “Holiday Movies,” and “Dog Lovers Club,” among other things.
SAMS Time was also held earlier this fall, when students participated in three sessions over a couple of months. In order to allow variety in choices, students changed topics for the winter sessions. Students who previously did not get what they wanted were given another chance.
“The very first session – when you just pick your activities – is the hardest,” Ms. Grady said. “Inevitably we have kids who come down to the cafeteria and tell me they want something different.”
Students signed up by filling out a survey on Google Classroom that listed all of the session opinions. Each picked four different choices and were assigned classes based on their selections. If students didn’t sign up, they were given activities. Everyone participated in the event.
“We had about 60 students who did not fill out the form or they might have picked the same activity for all four of the choices and it was full,” Ms. Grady said.
SAMS Time took place around the entire school, in places such as classrooms, gyms, the auditorium, the cafeteria and even outside. Every activity required a different location. For example, the Laser Tag activity took place in the Auditorium because of the large amount of space and easy access to darkness.
Ms. Grady said SAMS Time has been around a while and there are plans to host it in future school years.
“We started it before Covid and then things shut down, but everybody really enjoyed it so we brought it back,” she said.
She also said that a Google Form will be sent at the end of the year to gather feedback to see if anything needs to be changed.
If early feedback is any indication, the students were pleased with the event. Seventh Grader Jacob Ament what he enjoyed about Coding Club. “I could do different things,” he said, “but I created a music player using a small speaker and wires. It sounded pretty good and played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
THE SAMS SALMON 