There are tons of clubs all around Jenks High School: Math Club, Science Olympiad, Key Club, FCCLA, and many more. Some clubs are sponsored by the school, and some are student-led, meaning students have to work a little harder to promote themselves to the school.
An example of a student-led club is the Jenks Poets Society.
Though there is a poetry class offered, some may not be able to take the class if they have a busy schedule. If they have a love for poetry but don’t want to take a class for it, they can join the poetry club.
The club started this year and mostly wanted to show that poetry doesn’t have to be conventional or boring and that a student can do so much more than that.
“We started this club due to our love of poetry, but furthermore because we wanted to create a safe space for people to share their ideas and collaborate during the writing process. Poetry is fun but the ability to share it with others and create a real community is our top priority,” said Ragon Francy, the PR Officer for the club.
Everything has a community or wants one especially when it comes to writing poetry or writing in general. This club creates a great space for that while also providing good snacks and giving a challenge for that meeting.
“In our first meeting we had members write a poem starting with the word ‘perchance’,” said Francy.
Francy explains that they start their meetings with the officers introducing themselves and giving a quote or prompt for the member to use like the one above. They usually sit in groups, work together to come up with interpretations of the idea, and then every group shares what they did. After that, they have fun, eat snacks, and just talk and hang out with each other.
Though the meetings are pretty small they still are encouraged to put themselves out there whether that be in a meeting or a competition that is going on locally.
“Later on in the year we want to be more proactive about exploring opportunities such as the Poetry Out Loud competition, but we always let our members know when local competitions are happening whether it’s for poetry or writing in general,” said Francy.
If you want to join the Jenks Poets Society, follow them on Instagram, watch when they update when their next meeting is, and join in on the fun.
Another club, but is school-sponsored the school promotes them and they get some funding is DECA.
DECA is a marketing club, that is for those who enjoy marketing, or are interested in it, or even are taking a marketing class that goes easily with it. A student pays a fee of $35 to get a shirt and a membership making them an official member.
To the outside looking in, it's just a group of kids who like marketing. When actually that is just a small part of it.
DECA is actually a big international organization that does marketing competitions of different sizes, from state to nationals. National would join a certain type of division based on the type of marketing plan they're doing, for example, an innovation plan is different from a start-up plan. They can do this alone or in a group.
They basically prepare for this competition for most of this year and get ready to go to state in around February with the nationals happening in around the beginning of April.
While trying to prepare for this they still do fun field trips and fundraisers for the school. Recently they just did a can donation food drive along with also doing a dodgeball tournament for the advisory class and clubs that donated the most cans.
In the future, they are planning on doing a field trip to Oklahoma City to learn about the different marketing jobs that come with a basketball team and stay and watch the game that night.
If you want to try something different even if you don’t entirely like marketing try DECA. Follow them on Instagram at JenksDeca and they have meetings once a month on Thursday in the Building 6 auditorium during advisory.
I may have only mentioned a sliver of the amount of clubs that are offered at the school. There’s always something for someone and if you think there isn’t, try something new you would have never thought you would enjoy, sometimes you can shock yourself when you go outside your comfort zone.
Written by student: Crystal Best