by Stephanie Petrovick
The Spark Club tries to make kids in Hudson High feel more connected to the school and provide help for them when they need it. It started last year as a career and mentoring club. Each member could have a teacher, or mentor, assigned to help them with their school work if they need it, although at this point the mentors have not yet been assigned. At this point it provides other opportunities for students.
“Spark Club can be many things really. Spark Club is just to get people to have fun, have something to do after school. Because they won’t have anything to do in school, some kids just drop out, so in Spark Club we are trying to stop that from happening by giving them something in school to also connect with life,” said President Ashley Santos.
Other than not having mentors, the club is also different this year because they have not done much other than play games.
“Before Spark Club, I would just go home and do maybe one piece of homework out of everything I had, and then I would just do something like playing video games,” said President Victoria Baird. “Now I get to have fun with other kids.”
Last year, they had several college visits and many different gaming competitions. They watched the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” after school on the half day before Thanksgiving and had a gaming competition after school on December 22.
“We’re planning a lot of trips to colleges for the future because that’s also a big part of Spark Club, knowing what you want to do in the future and how you can reach that goal. I’m not sure which colleges we chose, but I’m pretty sure we chose a robotics college, so we can see how robots are made and how we can control them,” said Santos.
The only problem is that they have trouble gaining members. To date, only five people are members, and two of them are the presidents.
The current presidents, Baird and Santos, became acquainted with the club last year. Scott Darlington, the teacher running the club, had given Santos a golden ticket, which she used to enter the club’s first event. After that, Santos convinced Baird to join with her. The other members are John McHugh, Trevor Sawyer, and Amanda Beaudoin, all of whom were asked to join Spark Club by the current members.
“Last year we had a couple of events where we had a number of adults, like teachers and stuff, there as well as students. We had trouble getting students to come, so we had all these adults [who wanted to be mentors]. So this year we’re trying to just get a small group of kids who are really into it, and then we will slowly work into getting mentors involved. We try to get kids to join who don’t really have a niche at our school. Like, they might not really like sports or drama, or they aren’t interested in any of the clubs we have, and we have a lot of good clubs. So what we’re trying to do is search out those kids and give them somewhere they feel like they belong, and so they can focus on their school work. We are also trying to get students who have not been as academically successful as others,” said Darlington.
To promote the club, the students and Darlington have been trying to talk to different kids to spread the word, and currently they are working on making posters to hang up around the school.
The members have good memories of different events.
“The first time Spark Club ever happened we had so many people, so many mentors, and it was just amazing getting to know your mentors and the other members and playing these silly games,” Santos said. “I think my favorite part is just getting to know people, getting to have fun with everyone and being yourself with these people that you don’t know, but you can get to know them.”
Even though there are so few members, the club has succeeded in helping the students.
“It kind of prepares students for the real world. We can go out to job-type things. Like, when I go with Ms. Whitesel to the women interested in engineering, that’s what we want to do, that’s what we want to try to do. I’ve been here for about a year now, by making me try to keep my grades up, and it helps me to open up a bit more,” said Baird.
Darlington and the members have many hopes for the future of Spark Club.
“Eventually as the group builds over time, I hope to introduce other aspects to the club including teacher-student mentoring, career field trips, and homework help sessions,” said Darlington.