Last year, a leadership workshop containing students from the class of 2024 brought up important debate topics and opinions that lit a new fire in hopes of warming up the environment of FHC.
Ideas of identity, belonging, and commitment to the Ranger Pride traditions were all brought into question. Some of these topics showed just how much of a disconnect students have to the community concerning Forest Hills as a whole.
Rangers are taught to care and be strong for each other, so the administration and higher-ups of FHC decided to implement the One Hat Seminar period. Every other Wednesday, opposite to hour delays, students will review different concepts pertaining to the One Hat Policy with their first-hour classes.
Topics included are persistence, respect, inclusivity, dependability, and so much more. A presentation put together by leaders is then coached to teachers who relay the message back to their students. Sometimes, this includes videos or participating in conversation time. Then at the very end of the period, students respond with feedback and constructive criticism via a form sent by email.
These sessions last for twenty-five minutes. During this time, FHC wishes for its student body to consider what they could do to better themselves and each other. However, this request has been labeled as demanding a response.
From freshmen all the way up to seniors, many believe that this new schedule change is unnecessary and unbelievably cliché. Supposedly, to take it seriously would be asking the world of FHC’s Rangers.
This is exactly where the disconnect begins.
FHC has come to terms with widely different views from Gen-Z, and is now trying to strengthen what holds potential; the expectations from its attendees.
Through the constructs of the society from the 2000s, messages of love and respect have been shoved so far down kids’ throats that growing up means refusing the forced, superfluous words.
Speeches of love and kindness have been so satire-centered that it’s viewed as a joke rather than taken seriously. If this is the way society treats positive messages, then how can one school stop it? The short answer is they can’t because nothing stops the mass.
The difference between FHC and other schools is that there is still a high sense of pride. As mostly upper-middle-class families, Forest Hills people tend to be happier, and more content with their way of living. Yet there’s also the competitive nature, wanting and comparing everything to sports and active hobbies.
Our competitive nature also holds us to a team, students reach higher to achieve not only the expectations of society but also of each other.
In a community of competition, some tend to hold themselves higher than others, or, in this case, higher than the so-called annoying requests that feel washed out and undeniably boring. Pride prevents an open mind to change.
This is also not a choice of pride, but rather taking on a mask that every other person wears. To not have that mask of pride would make one stick out like a sore thumb. Being self-conscious, a problem most students face means the likelihood of becoming prideful like everyone else.
So now how do we go about fixing this prideful nature? Taking a deep breath and calling out the wrong. How do we stop taking messages of love and kindness as jokes, and start calling out one’s need to stop playing into harmful stereotypes?
When we as a school start to realize that some cliché messages are truer and clearer than water, we will see the mistakes we have made ourselves. The One Hat Seminar is not for telling us rules or expectations. It’s to show how society causes problems without realizing them.
Our competitive nature also holds us to a team, students reach higher to achieve not only the expectations of society but also of each other. In that sense, we should have no problem overcoming and evolving to be better as a student body.
So, let us not look at these seminars as required attendance of all students, but rather as doing it for yourself, and in turn, doing the same for others.
