By Dylan Dickson
Shadow days, when eighth grade students visit different high schools to see if they want to go there, are finally starting again on September 27.
Shadow days start at around 8AM and end around 12PM. The students enter, see a video about Heritage, get a tour of the school, learn about the athletic, academic, and activities centers, and get a t-shirt. For the first time since COVID hit, students are finally going to be back in person instead of online.
When asked if they were excited about shadow days coming back, Becky Moody, the school’s counseling secretary exclaimed,
“Very much so! We had a great time last year and learned from our experience doing it online. We incorporated some of the cool things we did learn into this year’s shadow days, but being in person and seeing real students is absolutely exciting. So thrilling!”
Jill Rickard, the school’s Gifted and Talented Coordinator, agrees with Ms. Moody by elaborating,
“Yeah, we feel like you can interact better with people in person, of course, rather than online… we feel like people coming in the building and just feeling the vibe, seeing other people in person, is going to make them understand the heart of Heritage,”
When Moody and Rickard were asked if anybody has signed up for shadow days, Moody said,
“Oh my gosh, yes. We have 52 students for our first day, and I think we are at 49 for the second one, so somewhere around 100, 135, because we have already had someone sign up for December and for our very last one in April.”
Moody also exclaimed that students and parents are very excited about shadow days returning, saying
“Parents and students are very excited to get into the building. That was one of the biggest challenges of last year, was parents who said, ‘I’m going to wait until my student can come in and walk around’ and we kept saying ‘Well, we hope in the spring. We hope in the spring’ but it just never happened. So they are very excited about this! And as we said, we are too. Just to get real people back in the building, and have this chance to show them who we really are.”
The shadow days start Sept. 27 and go well into April.