Nearly 600 members of the incoming Timber Creek High School Class of 2020 showed up for the Aug. 11 Fish Camp.
Every year the Timber Creek Student Council and numerous teachers help to set up a special day dedicated to specifically the freshman class to learn about and even tour the campus in preparation for the nerve wracking first day that every underclassman has to face.
To make the camp a reality it took much preparation from STUCO participants and sponsors to conjure up such a huge idea over the three-month summer break.
“Ideas were tossed around towards the end of the school year on what we should be doing and how we can make improvements,” says Kaylee Wyman, a junior and vice president of the Timber Creek STUCO organization. “Over the summer it has been in full effect and our primary focus had been Fish Camp since we’re welcoming in the biggest freshman class so we needed to make it amazing. A lot of it was done at our summer leadership workshop to really set things in stone.”
The turnout for STUCO members has been excellent based on the mass amount of new students that arrived to all meet in the school.
Members of the organization also set a theme for the day revolving around Falcon Fury along with a set goal to achieve for every new student.
“The goal for Fish Camp is to ease all of the first year student’s worries so they get to see their friends that they probably haven’t seen in a long time as well as meeting new friends and families and just getting to know Timber Creek,” Wyman said.
A big core focus was also student interaction based on everything being ran by students instead of being teacher led.
“The freshman are all going to see their teachers faces and whenever I first came to school I wasn’t very worried about the teachers not liking me but rather so the new students and upperclassmen not liking me,” Wyman said.
Getting to meet the members of the school face to face really helps support this focus on what STUCO wanted to accomplish.
New students that attended Fish Camp had their own opinions formed as the day progressed.
“In the beginning it was a little difficult with getting signed in, but the day is a lot better now,” says Naya Eckhart, a freshman who attended Fish Camp. “It was a little overwhelming with the lines on lines of people when you walked in. Although, tours were helpful. After going on the tour and walking around multiple times it will make it easier on the first day.”
To most of the incoming students, the tours were a big hit and helped them learn the ways of the building and how to find paths and shortcuts to all of their classes for the big day.
With as much positive feedback the day received, there was some negative views on the day and some suggested improvements that could’ve made the day run smoother. Gabe Austin, another guest at the camp wanted to change the way tour groups were set up.
“They should’ve stuck us with friends and let us have some control of the families we were in.”
STUCO wanted to make the day very welcoming along with their goal of student interaction by putting random students together so they could all talk and get to know each other so some students had new friends to be with on the first day. Also, instead of calling them tour groups, STUCO chose tour families due to the fact that it sounds more welcoming to newcomers.
“The pep-rally should’ve been more towards the end of the day because it forms excitement and hype which would’ve been better to end the day with,” said Emmie Ambrose.
Even with the few negative opinions and suggestions on improvements, Fish Camp seemed to be a big hit according to all of the new incoming freshman’s experiences with the day and their intake on new information that will be useful to them on the first day.