Festivities, pumpkin painting and eating treats allows journalism, yearbook and newspaper students to receive a break after completing their newspaper.

“I enjoyed seeing everyone smile and just take a break because it’s been a super stressful year for me and for my students. It’s been a super stressful couple of years with everything going on in the world,” publications adviser Erica Kincannon said. “It’s important to be able to build your team because if you don’t have a strong team, you’re not going to be able to do the activities.” 

After completing the October print edition, the newspaper class held a party to celebrate Halloween and encourage team bonding. Team building activities, painting pumpkins and eating pizza were among the activities the students participated in. 

“I liked being able to talk with everyone. And it’s really nice because newspaper and journalism kids have been separated this year more than normal because new staffers really need to do a lot of their learning, so I’m really excited to get to know everyone that’s a part of the staff,” Co-Editor-in-Chief Danielle Carlisi said.

Every day for the month of September, the editors came up with team building activities for the first year staffer, which helped them come out of their shells. 

“So the idea behind the team building is not just to get you guys to know each other’s names, but to get to know about each other a little bit more and be able to lean on each other and find out where each other’s strengths and weaknesses are,” Kincannon said. “All of those things come out of those silly little team building activities that we do for those first 30 days.”