Many clubs and activities are offered at the school so every student has the opportunity to participate in something they are passionate about. Around a month ago, juniors Arden Harms and Bayan Sabha decided to start a coloring club. Sabha said coloring has always been a destresser for her.
“My favorite part about coloring is it’s a way for me to relax,” Sabha said. “It helps me forget about other priorities and just focus on one thing.”
Sabha said she hopes the club will become one community, despite one’s artistic abilities.
“I wanted to start the club to kind of inspire other people who like to do the same thing as me,” Sabha said. “Like anyone who even just likes art, but maybe isn’t that good at it and wants to do something that would help them connect with people on the same page.”
As with creating any club, Harms said there were a lot of steps they had to take in order to get it started.
“First, we had to find some other people to be on the board with us because it couldn’t be just us,” Harms said. “And then, we had to find a teacher sponsor and set up our social media and then set all the dates [for meetings].”
After being in AP Lang together, Harms and Sabha said they asked English teacher Emily Winters if she would want to sponsor the club, as she always complimented their drawings.
“I had a few girls in my AP sixth hour come up to me. They were always coloring in class,” Winters said. “Eventually they had the idea to come up with the club and they asked if I would sponsor it and I love coloring as just a form of relaxing so, of course, I said ‘yes.’”
Winters described Harms and Sabha as hard workers. She said they have proven that they are able to balance the stress of taking an AP course with coloring.
“I am a sponsor for National English Honor Society and that’s a lot of effort for the sponsor to organize things,” Winters said. “With coloring club, they have taken the responsibility and they’re really self-sufficient, so it’s something I am really appreciative of.”
With taking on the responsibility of running a club comes challenges.
“The biggest challenge was figuring out meeting dates and finding a room to do the meetings,” Sabha said. “A lot of other clubs have meetings during the times we want to do them and finding a room was hard because Ms. Winters already has a class there, so it’s just really busy, but we figured it out.”
The club plans to meet bimonthly starting in January. Winters said they plan on keeping the meetings stress-free by playing music.
“My goal is to provide all the markers. You can bring your own markers and your own coloring supplies if you would like,” Winters said. “I will always have seasonal coloring sheets that I’ll print out and some coloring books as well.”
Harms said students can still become a part of the club and all they have to do is join the GroupMe, which is linked on the club’s Instagram account.
“I’m looking forward to just seeing what other people create and seeing how other people color,” Harms said. “Also, maybe in the future doing projects that go toward the community with this club.”
