Photo courtesy of LifeTouch.

Walter Johnson High School is known for being a school with a diverse student body. There are students with different passions that range from music and math to sports. This school offers a club, team or class for pretty much everything that a student could desire. Once a student joins that club or team, they must work hard in order to truly get the best experience. With sports teams, the athletes get rewarded by showing the student body their team spirit during pep rallies. People can also see this team spirit if they go to their games, but regardless, they are aware of who is on what team and how much effort they are putting in. But what about chorus, band or orchestra? They work extremely hard every single day throughout the year to create beautiful music. Why aren’t we also taking time out of the school day for the arts?

Pep rallies can be meaningful experiences that help bring the school together, but concerts are just as capable of doing that. These students deserve to show off their talents and hard work. This concert would not only be beneficial for the students in the classes, but it would also be just as beneficial for other students and staff. The classes play a variety of music that a lot of WJ isn’t exposed to. Listening to new music is an education lesson in itself and gives students the opportunity to experience genres out of their comfort zone.

While there are concerts for these classes at night, they aren’t advertised in school and are more for the parents. Most of the musicians’ peers aren’t aware that they are even happening. Although there is sure to be some way to promote the concerts, they don’t get any uninterrupted time to share when they will be performing as athletes do.

There isn’t anything wrong with pep rallies, but the fact that sports get time to show off their hard work and the arts discounts the artists, and the arts themselves. We live in an age where plenty of people are hesitant to support the arts. High school shouldn’t be a place that does that. High school gives people the privilege to start to find out who they are and what they like.

High school should encourage all different interests as equally important. If sports get to show the school their talent, the arts should as well. Pep rallies don’t just show off the athletes, they show how fun these sports can be and inspire others to try out these sports. Music classes should have that chance as well.

Whether it is just a short event to get the school aware of the students’ effort, or a longer concert that expresses to the school the talent that these students have, something needs to be done in order to give the arts the equivalent amount of attention as athletics.