Trick-or-Treat Street is a wonderful outreach project that brings in students from local schools to celebrate Halloween in a safe way. photo courtesy of Will Forrester
On Wednesday, October 31, 2018, Thomas Jefferson High School will be hosting its sixth annual Trick-or-Treat Street event from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m..
As Halloween rapidly approaches, the TJ community is enthusiastically preparing for its sixth annual Trick-or-Treat street event on Wednesday, October 31, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.. Each year, Thomas Jefferson High School’s Black Student Alliance (BSA) club hosts this candy-filled event as a way to form interactions with potential future Spartans from surrounding schools, including Southmoor, Samuels, Slavens, Place Bridge Academy, Bradley, Holm, Cory, Highline, and Shoemaker.
While the past five years have had an incredible turnout, this year’s event will be especially vivacious with a projected number of anywhere between 275 and 300 people in attendance. Furthermore, Trick-or-Treat Street will feature a total of 13 different entities including clubs, organizations, and individuals. This includes BSA club, girls’ basketball, band, NHS, Interact club, DECA, Leadership, Skills USA, special education, Hammersmith Corporation, the TJ Visual Arts department, robotics, and a professional caricature artist, Hunter James, who is also a TJ parent. Upon arrival, attendees will be greeted at the entrance of the building with plenty of Halloween pep by TJ’s very own band, as well an impressive robot that ejects T-shirts and frisbees to the masses. Inside the school, each club and organization will have a table near the main entrance, where they will be handing out candy as well as facilitating various games and activities for visiting students. The event will consist of fun games, an abundance of candy, and even a costume contest as well as prizes for the best costume. This year, at 5:00 p.m., there will be a parade of participants featuring their creative costumes beginning at the auditorium doors and ending up near the security desk, where BSA will be headquartered and recorded music will be playing.
Trick-or-Treat Street began in 2012, when former TJ principal Suzanne Morris-Sheerer contacted CTE Partnership Coordinator and BSA Sponsor Danny Showers about putting on an event to facilitate involvement between TJ and its future Spartans in surrounding schools. Showers explained, “In the long run, the kids from these schools will end up at our feeder schools, so we want to help them look forward and know that we want TJ to be their high school. We also want the parents to know that this is how we roll. We are serious about branding, we are serious about our advertising, and we are serious about being a key player in the southeast area for education.”
While this event is primarily intended for elementary students, the TJ community can still greatly contribute to the cause. In future years, Showers hopes to have more club involvement and volunteer participation. Any students who wish to volunteer at this event should contact Mr. Showers and secure a spot. “This event is great fun, and we look forward to it every year,” Showers enthused, “I want students to understand that this is not a BSA only event, it’s not a Mr. Showers event, this is a TJ community event, and our goal is to facilitate involvement with future Spartans.”
