Friday Funday's Identity Crisis: Where Has it Gone?

Outrage rang through the middle school halls the whole month of September. 

“What?” 

“No Friday Funday?” 

The students at Lakeside Middle School were (and still are) confused about the flux state of our beloved weekly PAWS activity. Fun Friday was a period where students could intermingle and enjoy various activities, like intramural sports tournaments and karaoke.

This is understandable, considering that many people either believed Friday Funday was canceled for good or simply hadn’t thought about it at all. This article will debunk the mystery and confirm the current status quo: Friday Fun Day has neither been ejected from our PAWS system nor has it been replaced by the “dreaded” advisory time. We believe that Friday Funday is an important part of school life, and shouldn’t be replaced, but as you can tell, this decision was not up to us.

We spoke with Ms. Abu Rahmeh about some of the student body’s concerns about Friday Funday, and she shared with us insights that can now be spread schoolwide.

The first thing we learned was that Friday Funday has now been moved to Thursdays, and will mostly happen every three weeks. However, we have found that promise has not been upheld. After 3 months of school, we have only had one “Thursday Funday”. Our joyous Fridays have become a mere speck on the calendar, occasionally scratched out for the sake of a “more important” activity.  

Now, to make this a smooth transition, Community Meetings and Assemblies have been merged into one day, typically with short announcements and then some sort of guest speaker or other talk… And no kindness shoutouts! Our beloved notes of gratitude and friendship now resort to being pinned to a wall, unread, unseen, unheard. An absolute atrocity.

But, of course, there is no better source for opinions on a topic than the people who it directly affects. So, we made a form and put it in the Daily. In our form, which garnered 106 responses, we asked students to tell us what they thought of Fun Friday, and the responses of those who were last year were almost unanimous - Friday Fun Day was a keeper, and it is sorely missed, though it has not been removed. Out of 62 students who were here last year, 51 of them gave very positive rankings (a 5 or a 4) on a scale of 1 to 5 that asked them how much they enjoyed Fun Friday in years before.

A common reason why students said they enjoyed Friday Funday was that they enjoyed “unstructured free time” to hang out with friends and the ability to choose and flow through different stations. However, some people also said that they felt like they missed out on having more advisory time and are happy with the current Friday Funday situation. We’re guessing that those students have a “good” advisory, meaning that they have multiple friends among themselves.

Now, with our article concluding, we’d like to quote two of the responses to our survey. Students, together we must rally for “Less advisory time!!! More fun time!!” Students, “...WE MUST BRING IT BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Students, rally. Students, speak out. Students, we know of the fun of which we have been deprived. Students, we must not give in. If we work together, unanimously we can rise to the occasion and do the right thing. It is up to you to decide the fate of the Middle School… choose wisely.