GRHS receives national recognition

Green River High School is always looking for ways to improve the school experience and give back to the community, and has now received national attention for that effort.

Students and educators from Sweetwater County School District No. 2 attended the Jostens Renaissance Global Conference in Orlando, Florida at the end of July. During the conference, Green River High School was recognized as a Silver Tier School of Distinction.

Nine GRHS students and three educators attended the conference from July 17 to 20.

School of Distinction Award

"[The award is] a recognition of schools that are making a positive impact on the culture and climate of their schools," Bradlee Skinner explained.

Skinner is the theater director at GRHS and was one of the faculty members who attended the conference.

Eighteen schools nationwide received a designation as a school of distinction. Seven reached the platinum tier, three reached gold, and GRHS was one of eight schools in the silver tier.

There is an application process to be chosen as a school of recognition, with a "pretty stringent checklist of things that they're looking for," according to Skinner. The high school had to apply, document events throughout the school year, show measurable progress like decreases in behavioral issues and increases in graduation rates and attendance, and show how the school recognizes students within the classroom and in the community. Skinner said the lengthy application process was made easier because of how much the school has been doing lately.

"The students at Green River High School are awesome and they're already doing a great deal, whether it's through clubs or organizations like National Honor Society or FFA," he said. "Those groups are out there in the community, doing great things and helping and so we're able to just highlight those and then show what our students are doing. And it was nice that those things individually and those groups collectively are improving and benefiting our school."

Skinner explained the school works to create partnerships in the community and find ways to give back to the people and organizations that support the high school. This drives the students to work hard for good causes.

Receiving a national award for the school's work shows "our students are doing the right things and they're doing it for the right reasons," according to Skinner.

He also believes the award shows the school values all students, regardless of what activities they're involved with.

"We're trying to be able to shine the light on every single kid," Skinner said. "Somebody who's the starting quarterback or the homecoming king is just as valued as that student that had a 1.5 GPA but raised it to a 2.1. That's value. And we want all of our kids being able to define their own success. . .and we want to celebrate that success when they reach it." 

Marisa DeClercq, the student council advisor at GRHS, also attended the conference and believes the award will help the students and the staff to see the effort being put in at GRHS to create a fun, welcoming, and safe environment "that hopefully they will want to be at and be proud of.

Jostens Renaissance Conference

Continually improving and providing the best learning environment is the focus of the Jostens Renaissance Conference, which Skinner explained is "the world's largest educational conference geared specifically towards improving culture and climate of your schools, your classrooms and your school district."

The conference provides resources for students, educators, administration, and basically everyone involved in schools. Those who attend the conference can attend sessions on topics they're interested in learning more about. Topics at this year's conference included things like fundraising, student leadership, social emotional learning, mental health, etc. 

At this year's conference, the GRHS students were invited to lead one of the breakout sessions, where they presented on the annual local Make-A-Wish fundraiser hosted in conjunction with Rock Springs High School.

"The whole premise behind [the conference] is students are going to learn more and do better in schools that they like going to," Skinner said. "So the more that teachers can make their classrooms more engaging, more effective, the students are going to learn better. Students that go to school, where they enjoy being there, they like the relationships that they have with their classmates, with their teachers, with the administration, it just makes for a better environment and they're going to perform better and the better they perform means increased graduation rates and decreased behavioral issues."

Getting back to normal

Both Skinner and DeClercq recognized the effort GRHS has put into creating a better environment recently, especially in trying to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Students just struggled in finding normalcy," Skinner said. "They needed something to bring back the love and the joy of school." 

DeClercq agreed, saying there was a different feel after COVID. Building back to a sense of normalcy has been an ongoing process, but improvements have been made, such as being able to hold assemblies and rallies again this year. DeClercq also noticed the growth in the student section at sporting events, seeing kids get more involved and enthusiastic again.

"It really brought those kids together," she said. "As we move forward, I want to bring that to all of the events, the theater performances, the band concert, and just get the kids involved with each other's lives. And I think we're in the right direction right now."

"We were able to do what we could because of the commitment that our school leadership had to getting back to normal, the commitment of our district leadership, the commitment of our teachers," Skinner said. "They were focused on making sure that kids had that normalcy again . . . so that our schools could get back to running the way that they need to run to give kids the best environment to be successful in their learning."

Future Goals

After attending the conference, Skinner, DeClercq, and the students are excited to share their new ideas and keep helping the school improve in the future.

"[The students] learned so many new ideas to bring back," DeClercq said. "It's almost bad because they have so many ideas and they want to run with everything. We're going to have to cut it down." 

DeClercq has her own ideas she wants to implement, including holding fun pep rallies in the place of normal assemblies, having murals painted to make the school more colorful and inviting, and having more involvement with students in all school activities.

Skinner wants to see the high school continue to improve graduation rates and show other measurable signs of improvement so the school can hopefully receive gold or platinum tier School of Distinction awards in the future. He also hopes the students who went to the conference will be able to share what they learned with others at GRHS and other schools in the state and to be a resource to other student leadership groups.