School Events

The Vance County High School staff and student body performed a 2 week skit, from September 25, 2024 to October 11, 2024, about the process of voting. The skit was an idea of Sheila Burwell, the school’s librarian and the Civic Literacy Teacher, Loretta Terry. Ms. Burwell wanted to teach the student the importance and the process of voting in America. She reached out to Ms. Terry, who does class projects in class similar to what she was trying to do. Being that it is voting year the idea was a great one.

Burwell and Terry collaborated on how she wanted it to be and the idea was to let the students vote on each department teacher of the year, starting with the Principal which would of course be the school’s president and then selecting candidates from each department. Burwell and Terry formed a Committee of students that would not only be the actors in the skit but also act as the Board of Election. The process was to prepare a voter’s registration form and each student had to register to be able to vote. Once they registered to vote there was a ballot created for those the committee selected as candidates for each department;, which took about two to three days. The students then had to come to the polls on election day and vote. The voting process lasted school one day. There were about 310 students that came to the polls and voted. The votes were counted by a selected group of teachers. On the last day of the skit the committee/actors performed a skit detailing the history of voting. It started with the creation of the Constitution and shows a few of some important changes made with voting, starting from only caucasian men being the only people to be able to vote, to black men, to white women to all Americans.

The purpose of the skit was to teach our younger people the importance of and the changes that had to be made when it came to voting to include all Americans. It also showed that there are still changes being made even in the year 2024. To see the students so excited and willing to play their part was what made the entire process worth the work. To hear them explain their feelings about being in the play was even more important and exciting. It has been a long time since I, Terry, have seen students so willing to partake in a school activity like this. To see the students take part in their favorite teacher’s campaign and hear them cheer for the teacher they wanted to win with so much excitement made the whole process great.

There was a lot of work put into this skit to make it successful but none of it would have been possible without Faith Edmonds, Choice Puryear, Rosette Mlanda, Maurice Jackson, Alayna Johnson, Jontavious Nile, Destiny Crudup, Camarion Ragland Javion Vines-Holder, Jeffery Walthall, Antoine Doyle, Jr., Taeshawn Alston, Kristina Burnett, Lianna Vega, and Xya’ Riah Best the committee/actors. A special thanks to Vance County High School principal Dr. Neale Whitt for his support and allowing us the time and space during school hours to do it.