Why Are There So Few 6th Grade Club Members? 

For McCall 6th graders, this is the first time most of them have experienced school clubs. You would think that everyone would be super excited about this! However, 6th grade members are very rare.

 To help draw in younger participants, clubs make posters that advertise their activities. Our hallways are covered in these. As kids walk through the school, colorful hook lines reach out from the walls. Unfortunately, though, passerbys seem unfazed. Most clubs have barely any students, and it is rare to find 6th graders among them. 

Also, the McCall website has a link to an entire list of clubs, their timings, and the supervisors for them. This helpful resource is barely used by young students. We end up with a collection of older students that will graduate soon, leaving clubs empty. 

Some 6th graders who do participate in clubs say that they saw the posters, and found out that way. This is very interesting, because other club participants said that, from their perspective, the posters do nothing, and no one read them! They learned about clubs from word of mouth. So, it appears that everyone has their own unique way about learning about clubs.

Many students who do not do clubs that we asked said that they felt like their schedules were already packed. So, they did not want to do any more extracurriculars. It would be too overwhelming. This creates the question, though: Do 8th and 7th graders have less going on, are they just more open to busyness, or is it something else?

Honestly, when you think about it, the answer is simple. By the time kids get to grade 8, they have so many incredible bonus opportunities! Besides, the homework in upper grades is insane. If anything, the older McCall kids get, the more packed their schedules become. However, with time, students also become more friendly with this chaos. So, they feel less overwhelmed by the idea of joining clubs.

Furthermore, 8th and 7th graders have been at McCall for a longer period of time than the 6th graders. Most of them have had years to think about and experiment with clubs. These details definitely show why upper grade levels are more prominent in clubs.

Overall, this issue is not actually that dire. If students do join clubs as they get older, there will always be enough members to keep things going. Our newspaper fully supports joining lots of extracurricular activities, and a link can be found below to the school's club list.

McCall's Club List