Utica Weather

When we first came to the high school, we had a group of friends who all wanted to eat lunch together. The problem was, there wasn't enough room in the cafeteria for us to all sit together. Being such a close knit group, we came up with an alternative to splitting up and eating separately...an English teacher by the name of Miss Sidelko let us spend our lunch period in her room everyday. It became a safe haven for us, where we could all be together, enjoy each other's company, and talk about our day. We worked on homework or played games while watching The Price Is Right...or "The P.I.R." as we called it. We had celebrations for holidays, and brought in cake for each person's birthday. We came to be known around the school as the "Lunch Bunch", and we always looked forward to the 40 minutes we would get to spend in Miss Sidelko's room 5th period.
Sadly, halfway through the school year, Miss Sidelko's teaching schedule changed, and she gained a class during our lunch period. Although we haven't been able to eat with her for the last few months, we still visit her because she isn't just a teacher anymore...she is one of our very good friends.
The other two pictures are from Spirit Week in the fall. We wanted to have a hall decorating contest like we used to have, but the plans changed around and instead we were told to decorate a wall in the cafeteria. A group of the seniors were really disappointed because decorating our hallway was something we had looked forward to for a long time, and it wasn't just about winning a contest. Everybody has to walk through what is considered the "senior hallway" at some point during the day to get to a class, and we felt that having it all decked out the week of the big homecoming game would get everybody more into the Bulldog spirit.
So the seniors made some secret plans...we stayed after school Thursday and executed what was deemed "Operation Wallway" (a combination of "wall" for the cafeteria wall we were SUPPOSED to decorate, and "way" for hallway we DID decorate). We put up streamers, balloons, posters, and giant banners we had made the night before. As the finishing touch, we put flyers up on every door in the school with the following student written poem on it-

"To whom it may concern:
Have no fear of what you see,
for what we did we did with glee.
It's understood you hate a mess,
but we did it nonetheless.
It wasn't done to break a rule,
we just think our school's so cool!
But do not fear the mess we made,
we'll clean it up, the mess will fade.
Sincerely,
The Spirited Seniors"

The next morning when we walked into school, teachers were taking pictures of the hallway and the whole school was trying to figure out which seniors did it. Obviously word eventually got out about who it was, but we didn't mind because had accomplished our goal: students and teachers alike were all excited and it really boosted the school spirit to an all-time high for the last home game. It was one of our best memories from high school. The first picture is of most of the members of "Operation Wallway" on Thursday night after we finished, and the second is a group shot of everyone the next day during lunch (Green & White Day).