The loud music filling the gym air, the mini activities keep students involved and interested, and dance/cheer performances are what make up the most anticipated pep rally of the year, the pep rally against our rival, Harmony Highschool. Students have an opportunity to get excited and hype up their class. Students and staff enjoy building up our school spirit to cheer on our varsity football players as they prepare for the game that night. This excitement leaves many to wonder, why aren't there more pep rallies? Pep rallies are limited at St. Cloud high school as a teacher said, “due to loss of instructional time.”

      There has been an issue voiced by teachers that pep rallies cut into learning time. As many know, on the Fridays when there are pep rallies, the school runs on a Wednesday schedule to allot an hour for the event. This results in less instructional time these days. For example, lots of teachers choose to have tests on Friday because of the extra minutes, so when they lose that time, they also must decide to either give students less time or postpone the test. When they postpone tests, students may forget information they have just recently learned. This is a disadvantage to students as well because students who usually use the whole 50 minutes now get 42. This pushes the curriculum behind and creates unnecessary stress on both teachers and students.

      Teacher’s learning plans are interrupted or cut short as well. Teachers plan months ahead and having a shorter schedule on a day that is supposed to be a longer schedule will put the students and teachers behind. Stress levels rise as they try to catch the students up. This will also lead to students having more work to take home.

      Although many students would prefer to have pep rallies every week it is in the best interests of students and teachers to limit pep rallies. Having to lose instructional time every week would not only set students behind but also impact their grades.