Every year, students at Robinson take the initiative to start their own clubs with the help of teacher sponsors. This school year, there are quite a few new up-and-coming clubs going on that many students have participated in. The first club day of the 2023 – 2024 school year was on Sept. 16 and there was a pretty big turnout with almost every student joining a club.
There are about seven new clubs this year such as DECA, the Stock Market club, Chick-fil-A Academy Club, Ted X, As Above, So Below, 500 Moe and the Chess club, which was briefly here last year for a short period of time and sadly didn’t end up working out but has made a comeback this year.
The Ted X club was recently brought to history teacher Kevin McCray’s attention by IB junior Rishi Kamdar, who is one of McCray’s economic students this year. Ted X is almost like the speech and debate club but faster and more rigorous. The students are given a topic then on the spot they have to argue the topic for two minutes on whether they agree or not.
“It was actually Rishi’s idea to start the new club. He had recently come to me and asked if I could sponsor his new Ted X club and to me it seemed like a great idea, so I said yes. Our first club day was pretty exciting we had a good 50 students come in and Rishi and the other presidents made a list of topics which we were able to get through 50 topics on our first day,” McCray said.
Another newest club at Robinson is DECA, which stands for “Distributive Education Clubs of America.” DECA is for students who are interested in business, entrepreneurship or finance/marketing. It is sponsored by Robinson’s personal and family finance teacher Lori Bynum. DECA helps students nationwide on developing leadership skills in these areas and gives them opportunities to compete against other schools in the district as well as all over the state. These competitions give students opportunities to showcase their financial abilities when competing against other schools for recognition.
“These competition’s give students opportunities to showcase their financial abilities when competing against other schools for recognition and right now we have about 20 kids in the club. We are actually scheduled for a leadership event for next month and also a competition coming up in January and December,” Bynum said.
Bynum is the sponsor of another new club at Robinson as well; the second club being the Chick-fil-A club. You probably think that this club is just eating Chick-fil-A, but it is actually about giving back to the community. During their first club day, they helped put together children’s books to donate to a local hospital.
The last neweste club is sponsored by climate and culture resource teacher Lora Morgan called 5000 Moe, which aims to influence many young males across the nation to take a better path in their lives. This program helps young men learn about healthy living responsibility for males who don’t have that positive role model in their life.
“I really do think this club helps them because I think for young men who don’t have that positive role model in their life, they’re seeing other men who look like them so that they can relate,” Morgan said.
