Behind the scenes of STUCO

During Double Wolf Dare Week (DWDW), an annual fundraising week full of events and activities held at Edmond Santa Fe High School this year, students raised $202,082.53 for Not Your Average Joe (NYAJ), a coffee shop in Oklahoma City that employs individuals with intellectual, developmental and physical disabilities.

That amount was enough for NYAJ to build a second coffee shop in Edmond. But while students participate in exciting fundraising activities throughout DWDW, for Meg Gatewood, an English teacher and STUCO adviser at Santa Fe, DWDW is an extremely busy time coordinating and keeping planned activities on track; throughout the week she helps with assemblies and stays late after school to prepare for the night event. 

“DWDW for me looks like a lot of running around the school, going to the counting room, and setting up the next event or assembly; most of my time is spent in the counting room to keep up with how much money we have made,” Gatewood said. 

Homecoming (HOCO) is one of many significant and anticipated events for students each year. HOCO week and Howdy Week are both set up by STUCO  which consist of many dress-up days and fun-filled activities. STUCO plans all the dress-up days for Santa Fe that connect with their events. With the help of STUCO students, Gatewood organizes these events and gets them approved by Santa Fe’s administration. 

STUCO students make a multitude of decisions with each activity. Gatewood tries to help them with making any big decisions for those events, but at the end of the day, she lets them have the majority vote because she wants her council student-led.

“I am the chaos coordinator; the kids really do all the work, but I am there to help guide them,” Gatewood said. “Any input I believe is necessary, then I definitely give that input, but my goal is that it is a student leadership council.”

The behind-the-scenes of STUCO looks like a lot of planning and Gatewood does that through filling out the mounds of paperwork required for district activities.

“I fill out a lot of paperwork and forms and help them to put on the best events possible,” Gatewood said. “For every event, there are about five forms that have to be filled out; the activity booking form which gets the event on the calendar, the purchase orders forms which help us buy supplies; we have to book the school officers and make sure administrators are at the event. So, there is a lot of paperwork behind every event.” 

With all that STUCO does for the student body, Gatewood also has English classes to teach. Maintaining the balance of teacher life and STUCO sponsor can get challenging at times, especially with DWDW. 

“It gets more challenging at different parts of the year,” Gatewood said. “My goal as a teacher is to always have my English classes be my priority, but typically in January and February the table turns and STUCO gets to be my priority for those two months, and then I rest and get back to being an English teacher.”

Gatewood tries her hardest to help produce a comfortable environment for students at Santa Fe. She is the behind-the-scenes of our STUCO.