Spirit Week 2023 featured faculty developing their own theme days, marking the first time faculty joined students in this tradition. A core component of Spirit Week at Moorestown Friends is class theme days, where each grade selects a daily theme that its members adhere to. From Tacky Tourist Tuesday to Barbie vs. Oppenheimer, each opportunity to dress up allows students to demonstrate their classwide spirit, and this year, faculty joined the fun.
The idea for teacher-theme days originated from a conversation between the Head of Upper School Noah Rachlin and Arts Department Chair Ailsa Stevenson-Moriuchi about a faculty t-shirt design: “I [was] involved in conversations about the [faculty] t-shirt, and there was a lot of interest once it was clear that we might do a t-shirt, which led to an interest in doing other things as well,” explained Rachlin.
Stevenson-Moriuchi elaborated: “[Middle/Upper School Drama Director Holly] Kitching was one of the main people that ended up asking [Upper School Dean of Students Will] Miller and Mr. Rachlin if we could participate in Spirit Week. They sent out a form asking who would like to participate, and we got about 40 people who said they would participate in Theme Days.”
For faculty, Spirit Week began with ‘Monochrome Monday,’ followed by ‘Throwback Tuesday,’ where teachers dressed like they did in high school. Wednesday was ‘Dress Like Mr. Rachlin Day,’ which caught Rachlin off guard: “That was a super fun surprise; I had kind of a [shocked] reaction when I saw [English teacher] Dan [Sussman] and realized everyone was dressed up like me.”
Thursday was Tardy Slip Thursday, where teachers wore custom shirts made by Stevenson-Moriuchi that displayed a late slip and funny, specific reasons each teacher would be late. Regarding the process of designing the shirt, she said, “I did it really quickly. I went from design to ordered shirts within a week. I had an idea wanting to poke fun and tie it back to the school.”
On Friday, the US faculty surprised students with a video to kick off Airband, where teachers pretended to be preparing for a dance routine. “Most of us were not interested in performing a live Airband, but we were fine with a video,” Stevenson-Moriuchi said.
English Department Chair Debra Galler described the process of putting the video together, saying, “We started by having a meeting to brainstorm. That was really fun because we were cracking each other up with lots of ideas of how we would pretend to be putting together an airband, and then Mrs. Kitching put it all into a draft storyboard. Then, we had some 7:45 A.M. secret filming sessions in the auditorium. We just had a lot of fun with it, and then Mrs. Kitching did the editing and sent out some early versions. If students heard teachers cracking up at their desks during the week, they were probably watching those.”
With faculty participating in Theme Days, they have provided another opportunity for the community to bond and uplift each other over Spirit Week. As Rachlin said, “It’s great we can be a community that works hard and has fun. We were having a lot of fun as a faculty to make this a really fun thing for students in a way they hadn’t expected.”
