By Elizabeth Campos

Staff Writer

While only one rally during the entire school year honors the academic excellence of students at Gabrielino and briefly touches upon fine arts, the emphasis on celebrating students minds is lost amidst the overemphasis on sports.

Although praising sports teams on campus can be seen as influential in school spirit, in understanding that not all students participate in sports and that  In addition to this, most academic teams and performing arts rank higher than a majority of the sports teams on campus, questioning as to why there isn’t more emphasis on academic and performing art programs on campus.

In accordance to a study by the University of Chicago, “Test performance can improve dramatically if students are offered rewards just before they are given standardized tests and if they receive the incentive afterward.”

Through recognizing students that perform well in their classes and maintain strong grade point averages while enrolled in challenging courses, the chances of them improving their grades or maintaining them is higher than students that don’t get recognized. In also recognizing the improvement of struggling students, students can find motivation to continue to the improvement of their grades through receiving recognition for their progress.

In addition to recognizing students for their academics, it is important to recognize other organizations and performing arts programs on campus as well. Programs such as Future Business Leaders of America is an organization on campus that performs extremely well. Sending eight students to the national tournament and cultivating 14 different titles in at their State Leadership Conference, Gabrielino FBLA outbeat over 50 schools.

“We work really hard to prepare and put months of work into what we do. It would be nice to be more widely recognized for our work and the titles we bring back to Gabrielino.” stated club president Benjamin Vo.

While programs such as the Gabrielino Screaming Eagles Speech and Debate team is ranked 6th in the nation out of 500 schools, the lack of recognition the team receives in comparison to sports teams that do not advance onto CIF is disheartening.

“Having our team recognized for what we do and what we provide students is so important. Bringing awareness to our team and the level of distinction our team brings to Gabrielino High School is under recognized.” stated Senior Richelle Chow.

While academic clubs are not the only other programs that perform well at Gabrielino, the three choirs, band and orchestra of Gabrielino have brought back multiple titles from their festivals. With orchestra placing 3rd at their Forum Music Festival, band placing 4th at the Southern California School Band and Orchestra Association championship, and all three choirs receiving awards of superior distinction.

While not all students are part of performing arts and academic programs on campus, it is important to remember to recognize students for performing well in school or improving upon their grades. Through recognizing students through their efforts in school , it can be seen that an improvisation may be made in the students attitude through recognition, encouraging them to perform better.

With over hundreds of students in a academic or performing arts program on campus, the lack of recognition these students receive is underwhelming and can be seen as upsetting to students for not receiving equal representation on campus. In addition to this, with students who focus purely on academia not receiving a sufficient amount of recognition as well, it can be seen how much more schools tend to put their focus on simply celebrating the achievements of sports teams rather than the main focus of school, academics.

While many argue that school spirit revolves around celebration of campus sports, it’s easy to forget the impact of academic and performing art programs and the amount of student involvement  they provide as well.