With holidays come traditions. Kenwood High has their own holiday traditions students and staff look forward to and participate in each year.
A long standing tradition of thirteen years here at Kenwood is Adopt a Family. It was started by Kenwood’s PPW Ms. Cox but since 2017, Mrs. Brendlinger has been overseeing the program. Here at Kenwood the staff and teachers buy the gifts for the students in need.
This school year Kenwood staff assisted 27 students and their families with food and gifts. A young child of a student was also part of the gift assistance this season. “Mrs. Lalia was instrumental in supporting ESOL families in need,” added Ms. Brendlinger.
Ms. Kramer has participated in this ongoing Kenwood tradition for years. “These gifts are going to influence whoever’s receiving and it’s gonna be helpful to them.”
Many teachers that have participated in similar Christmas traditions to provide gifts for those in need, find the Kenwood one to be a favorite because they go towards our own students and their families. Mrs. Brendlinger adds, “We started this tradition because we know there were a lot of families in need and we at Kenwood are a family and we wanna make sure we can help our students in any way.”
Each year Kenwood’s AVID program decorates stockings to donate to local nonprofit Empower4Life. This year AVID sent over 50 stockings to fill for children in need. Another helpful student organization, Kenwood Cares, worked with our new ESOL program and also got in to the holiday spirit by wrapping the gifts collected for the ESOL families in need.
A Kenwood JROTC holiday tradition is to help in the cafeteria before the holiday break. This year they helped in the cafeteria on Dec 19. This is one of their traditional community service events within Kenwood JROTC program. “The purpose of this event is to instill a sense of ownership and pride in our school, and in showing them how hard the support staff work to ensure the daily presentation of services to our entire student body,” shares SMS Stone.
As part of their service, during their time in the cafeteria they go around and clean everyone’s trash, they wash dirty dishes, they help with the food, and just overall try to make the lives of those working in the cafeteria easier.
Another anticipated holiday tradition is the Sports Science Academy annual SSA Holiday Basketball Tournament. This was the fifth year for the holiday tournament. SSA-11 students spend first quarter learning about how businesses are run, along with management careers, and qualities to succeed. The culminating project is to plan and run a basketball tournament. Each student is assigned a job/responsibility from coach, to athletic direction, tournament staff, concessions to cheer coach. It’s become a well loved holiday tradition for the SSA organization.
The event is an anticipated event by many Kenwood programs as several other programs such as IB, AVID, and music attend to engage and support the event. Kenwood AVID student, Chloe C, shares, “It’s a fun way for the students of our different programs here at Kenwood to support each other. IB is often doing IB things, SSA doing sports science things, AVID and music doing their own thing and this gives us a way to all connect before the holidays.”
A well loved holiday tradition of school from elementary to high are the annual holiday concerts! Here at Kenwood our musical concert was held on December 13 in which the audience enjoyed an evening of great performances by our band, orchestra, and choir. On Friday, December 15 our KHS Dance team took the stage for their winter recital performance.
However, our students, staff, and family choose to celebrate the holiday season and winter break after they leave our halls today, we wish everyone a safe and relaxing time off from school and look forward to seeing you back in the new year! Happy Holidays, Kenwood community!
