Manitou Springs High School’s Sources of Strength program put together a school event called Rock Paper Scissors. This started on March 30 and ended during advisory on April 2.
Nathaniel Owen, who is part of the leadership team for Sources of Strength and a math teacher at MSHS, helped to put together and come up with the idea. “The thing that sparked this idea was when I watched a couple of students at a football game playing Rock Paper Scissors all the way across the stands,” Owen said. “I thought of how great it would be if we could get the entire school playing Rock Paper Scissors during a tournament at the same time.”
All of the students got one set of beads on Monday during advisory and would battle each other in a game of Rock Paper Scissors and whoever would win would get to take the other person’s beads. “In order to support the academics that are going on, the rules are that if you get caught playing during class time, you will lose all of your beads, any progress that you’ve made with winning immediately gets lost,” Owen said. “Teachers also get to play and get to claim those beads from the students that are playing during class, or students can just challenge the teachers outside of class as well to win some of those beads.”
During the assembly, all of the students that were left with beads came down to the gym floor to battle and when someone would lose they would have to give them all of their beads and then follow them around for the rest of the game to form a support team until they either lost or won the final round. “The giant Flavor Flav GOAT necklace is going to the winner of the tournament today during advisory,” Owen said.
Madison Anderson, a senior at MSHS, won the Rock Paper Scissors competition during the assembly after coming in last minute for the final round. “It just seemed like fun and gave me something to do during the school day, because it was kind of boring,” Anderson said.
The Sources of Strength program used this event as a way to build community with positive friendships and a healthy activity. “Sources of Strength has a wheel of mental health with different sources in it like mentors, positive relationships, healthy activities and the purpose of the Rock Paper Scissors is to build community to experience high school and have a little bit of excitement coming back from spring break,” Owen said.
