Cleveland held its annual CHS Gives Back assembly on Jan. 8 after students and staff and alumni raised $13,300 for families in need during the holiday season, exceeding the school’s goal of $10,000.
As incentives for the fundraiser, the staff agreed to do several different challenges for each amount of money raised. From staff members eating hot wings to performing the “Thunderstruck” dance, this was an assembly to remember.
The assembly started strong with attendance coach Isaac Camacho getting pied in the face by Principal JoAnn Wadkins, spiking student’s excitement.
Next up was history teacher Steve Nims, who performed the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” as a guitar solo for students’ raising $2,000. A unique reward, the polished performance gave energy to the school spirit.
“Woke me up at nine in the morning! A great kickstart to the assembly,” said Sophomore Class President Julia Heineck.
The next event featured a three-legged race between teachers Andy Sorensen and Ian Maurer against counselors Nick Yoder and Neil Gibson. The counselors overcame a slow start to win down the stretch with students cheering loudly.
The reward for raising $4,000 was a no hands eating competition between teachers Ezra Ereckson, who had the strategy to open his mouth wide, and Eric Mirsepasi, who had no strategy and barely found a way to win.
In the next competition, the science and PE teachers won the tug of war versus the math and art teachers. As the $6,000 reward, staff members Seamus Shalman, John Golden, Sean Murray, and Meg Griffith participated in the TikTok slime passing challenge. The objective of the game was to pass a bin of slime over everyone’s head into the next person’s bin while blindfolded.
“You didn’t tell me I was blindfolded,” Vice Principal Murray exclaimed.
As the game began and the first pass of slime from over Griffith’s head to Murray occurred, his bin to catch the slime broke and slime fell all over his lap. After recovering, the slime made it across all four teachers and was a success and an entertaining show.
“I wanted someone to get it dumped on their head,” Heineck commented in disappointment.
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Thunderstruck dance was performed by staff members Alan McClary, Eric Levine, Alex Fuller, and Isaac Camacho in honor of the $7,000 goal reached. As the excitement for this dance was high, the laughter was higher during the performance.
“I think they practiced that for ten minutes,” sophomore Indra Fox said.
Although the dance seemed to be less practiced than expected, it got the students laughing and engaged.
For the $8,000 reward, teachers Julia Blattner, Jessie Eller-Isaacs, and Ashley Clemens participated in three rounds of eating a hot wing and answering questions by the leadership students running the assembly. Every round the wings, prepared by the culinary class, got spicier as the questions got harder and the three teachers shared their honest opinions.
“The wee little ninth graders are my fav,” Blattner revealed when asked about her favorite grade to teach as a history teacher.
“The hill I am willing to die on is if you bring a drink from Dutch and it sweats on my table you will fail,” Eller-Isaacs shared with the school.
“The Cleveland special is a student who gets an A and sheds tears because they want a high A,” Clemens said about students’ dramatic reactions to test scores.
After the hotwings challenge, the leadership students set up a chair for teacher Mike Bauer, who agreed to get his hair shaved off for raising $9,000. The process was slightly hard to watch with the uneven shaving, but they added glitter and color to add glam and keep the students intrigued.
“Next time they should shave someone’s head who isn’t bald already,” freshman Lila Masini shared.
For reaching the $10,000 goal, it was announced to the assembly that Flex would be moved to after the last period of the day for the spring term, like how it was in previous years. However, this announcement was later clarified in an email that it would be limited. A check on the school calendar showed that Flex will be held in the afternoon only on Feb. 26 and 27.
Students have many different feelings about this reward and believe that they should not have changed the flex time in the first place.
“This isn’t a privilege or reward, it should be a regular policy,” junior Wynn Posedel said.
The CHS Gives Back assembly brought the entire school community together and gave everyone a reason to smile and feel proud knowing that they raised money for those in the community in need.
