Episode 24: Provo High Principal Pantry Drive

January 26th, 2024 /
Shauna Sprunger /

Sup with the Sup

00:00 / 15:10

Welcome, everyone, to the next episode of Provo City School District’s What’s Up With the Sup podcast. I am Superintendent Wendy Dau. This week, I am at Provo High School to talk with student government members about their annual canned food drive for their principal’s pantry. I am joined by Aubrey Beus and Jacob Luke.

But before we talk to them, let’s go over our updates.

We want to make you aware that we are seeking feedback on the priorities for our district strategic plan. An email has been sent to all families in the Provo City School District asking you to rank and rate what priorities that we need to focus on as we move forward with our three to five year plan. Please check for that survey in your email box. We will also provide links on our social media accounts, and this information will be used to help our steering committee really dive into what our focus will be as a district.
This next update is specific to our families that live in the Dixon neighborhood. We would like to get your feedback on what you would like to see at the Dixon Middle School site, since our school is going to be moving over to Shoreline next fall. We have scheduled our next meeting on January 31st at 6 o’clock p. m. at Dixon Middle School in the auditorium. We would love to have a discussion and receive feedback about what that neighborhood would like to see prioritized on that site.I hope to see you there.
Parent teacher conferences are coming up in February. Elementary will be on February 7th through 9th, high school on February 15th, and middle school on February 20th. Please look for more information to come directly from your school.
And then please look for the weekly video cast from me every Friday. In the short video, I provide important information and updates about work happening throughout the district.

And now, on to our podcast with our Provo High students.

Wendy: Well, welcome everyone to this week’s episode of What’s Up with the Sup. I am here at Provo High School with two of our student government officials, right? Should we call you officials? Is that okay? Yeah, I like that. So with me today, I have Jacob Luke and Aubrey Beus, who are both seniors. So welcome to our show.

Jacob: Thank you.

Aubrey: Thank you so much.

Wendy: So, um, tell me a little bit about what your position is specifically in student government here at Provo High School.

Aubrey: I am the VP of Activities here, so I oversee all of like our, kind of, I help out with our assemblies, our kind of games, our activities during lunch and after school. So, yeah.

Wendy: You have to be a pretty innovative person to do that job, right? Yes.

Aubrey: Yeah, it takes a lot. Very creative.

Wendy: And what do you do Jacob?

Jacob: Um, I’m the spirit chair, SBO. So I’m, um, I’m in charge of student sections. I help with assemblies and kind of stuff like that. And I just make sure people are having a good time, eh? You know, like dress up weeks and, and all that.

Wendy: And you need to know that Jacob is, he’s showing his school spirit with his bulldog’s green shirt. So good job. So I’m very impressed even this early in the morning. That’s awesome. So tell me a little bit about your food drive that you’re doing right now. And how long has Provo High done this? Do you even know or, and what is the purpose of it? I’m just going to let you talk about it and then I might ask some follow up questions, so.

Jacob: It’s a program called Principal’s Pantry. It’s for a bunch of schools in our community. We gather up donations, whether it’s money donations, canned food, clothes, or hygiene products. You know, like, whatever people will donate, we’ll take. The cool thing about it is it goes right back into our community. It’s not just, um, we’re raising it for elsewhere. It’s going to the people around us who really need it. Yeah, we’re just doing that. We’re incentivizing that.

Wendy: That’s awesome.

Aubrey: Provo High has been doing a food drive for so many years. And so a lot of our activities are like always, like, looked forward to and get a lot of participation because we’ve been doing them for like so long. It’s always just an annual thing.

Wendy: So it’s really become part of the tradition of being a Provo High Bulldog. Yeah, i

Aubrey: s the food drive.

Wendy: Okay. Um, you guys do it in January. When does it start? When does it end? What is your reasoning for the time of year in which you hold it?

Jacob: Well the main reason is it’s kind of just at a downtime in the year where there’s not too much crazy stuff going on but enough to where 2e can like publicize it. We do it for like three or four weeks, I think, so it starts kind of right after term two, so it was like January like 12th or something, and then it’s gonna go all the way into February.

Wendy: That’s great. Well, and I feel like sometimes, and maybe people disagree, maybe if they ski or something, but I feel like January is such a depressing month, so if you can really put your energy towards something really fun and really, you know, that you know is benefiting people, I, I bet it makes the month go better, maybe?

Jacon: Absolutely.

Wendy: Okay.

Jacob: All the fun stuff’s at the beginning or the end of the year, so it just gets down.

Wendy: You are in a box. So when I came in this morning, you guys are in a box. So I want you to describe this box and tell me The purpose of the box and how this is, um, incentivizing people to donate more. Cause I’m fascinated by this.

Aubrey: Well, the box is a few feet off the ground and it is not very big. And it has glass walls so people can see us and see what we’re doing. And so there are four of us that are nominated to stay in the box for a couple of days. And the more money that we raise is the more things that we have to do in the box. So we had to add like balls for like to make it a ball pit and to color our nails and our hair. And it just really incentivizes people to donate. And they just like to see us, and so we just like to publicize it.

Wendy: So there’s a little bit of this where they like to watch you have to do kind of crazy things.

Aubrey: Yes.

Wendy: Okay, cool. We definitely like doing that as human beings. What did you want to add to that, Jacob?

Jacob: Yeah, I mean, so at like lunch and stuff, when there’s hundreds of kids walking by, like there’s a giant list right next to the ball. They can see what we’re working towards. They can see our goal. And, you know, all the kids at lunch want to see is us singing karaoke or us painting our nails or doing makeup or whatever. And they just like walk by us and they just see us kind of live in there. And that’s just kind of, it’s just something that brings attention to the food drive for everybody cause everyone walks by it. And, uh, in a little bit, we’re gonna make the box smaller. We’re gonna add our football coach into it. We’re gonna do a bunch of crazy stuff.

Wendy: That will make the box smaller.

Jacob: It will make the box a lot smaller.

Wendy: I know because I met him and yeah, he’s going to take up a lot of space. Yeah, he’s awesome but he’s going to take up some space in there.

Jacob: Oh yeah.

Wendy: And, um, you also said you have to put makeup on each other sometime today?

Aubrey: Yep. Oh. That’s our next incentive during first lunch.

Wendy: Okay, so tell me, like what, like any kind of makeup? How is this gonna go? I feel like I’m gonna need pictures of this afterwards.

Jacob: Oh, you will. You will want it. Oh yeah. I was told I’d have just free reign to just do whatever I want. for makeup on Aubrey here.

Aubrey: Yes. Oh, he has free reign with some neon palettes that we have.

Wendy: Oh, there you go. It’s not like boring makeup. This is very exciting makeup. Okay. Okay. That’s fantastic. I love it. So tell me a little bit more about this principal’s pantry. So if I’m a family that lives in this area and I needed to get access to some of these resources, where would I go?

Aubrey: They have principal’s pantries in like Westridge Elementary, Dixon Middle School, and I think they’re opening one here at Provo High as well. Really, all that you have to do is you have to just go into the main office and ask to be taken to the principal’s pantry and either the main office or the counselors will come and get you and just take you to the principal’s pantry and you can really take whatever you need for your family.

Wendy: Okay. How could I help as a superintendent advertise this so that our community knows about it because I feel like I should know about this and I’m excited like this is really incredible what you guys are doing for the Provo High community, so how can I help with this so that our families are connected to those things?

Jacob: I mean get the word out in like any way you guys can just let people know that there are resources through the school district that they can get to to help them with their lives and yeah, point them to Dixon and Provo High and stuff.

Wendy: I think sometimes I worry that kids feel like there might be a stigma if they’re asking for help. How would you envision this so that that doesn’t happen, so that we make sure that they can ask for that in a, in a safe place?

Jacob: Well, ideally they could, um, they could just go let the, let their counselor know their needs, and like, you know, whether that’s just a meeting or just stopping by, and counselors are trained and awesome at that, so.

Wendy: Yeah, they are. And even our elementary schools have social workers and, and I think we just need to make sure that parents know that they can tell their kids that these are key people that they could go get some help from, right? So, what are the most interesting things that you’ve ever seen donated into the principal’s pantry?

Jacob: Simple stuff like toothpaste and deodorant. You wouldn’t expect it, but it’s

Wendy: But you’re grateful for it. Those things are really important, right? So that’s, that’s a big deal. So I would always be thinking of, like, is there mac and cheese or ramen or something like that? That could be really helpful. Well, how much have we, have you gotten in the past through these kinds of drives? How do you measure, like, your success?

Jacob: Well In the past, pretty much, like, it’s just like a general, like, canned food drive, so it’s way more focused on just canned food, and I wasn’t really involved with it, it was a few years ago, but like, we send them out to just different charity organizations and stuff, and And it’s just pretty much strictly canned food. But this one is just more directed at the people around us, because we realize we’re in a community that has its own needs, and so we’re doing money is the main thing, but then we’re also just doing anything else that you can spare, you know, all that stuff, so.

Wendy: It’s interesting that you talk about how it is coming back to your own community because I think sometimes students don’t always realize how much need there is amongst their own peers. And it’s been really quite fun to be in Provo to see how much awareness there is of the young people about what is needed and just how excited our students get about helping each other. So I just want to commend you for that because I think it’s great that you’re, that you’re trying to think of ways of how can we give back to the place where we live? That’s pretty fantastic. So not a lot -I won’t say not a lot of young people. Some young people don’t think about that, but I see it over and over again in Provo City School District. And it just, it makes me really thrilled to be part of Provo city and just the community here. So how are some other ways that you’re advertising this drive? Are you using like social media? Are you, how are you getting information out to families or to businesses for donations and things like that? What, what have been your strategies?

Jacob: So for right now, like. The kids in the box. Um, Instagram is like kind of our main thing. Um, just get it out. And we, we are out there in the box and like, like we said, tons of people are passing us. So, you know, we’re just like telling a lot of people about it, telling people to tell their parents all that. And there’s more to the food drive. Like once this kids in the box thing ends, we’re going to have multiple other events. And that’s where we’ll hope to get some businesses and more, you know, the adults in the community to come and see what they can do to contribute.

Aubrey: Um, we also have some business outreaches where we’ve been connecting with different, like, restaurants. I’m not sure if we finalized on those and stuff, but we have nights to go where we’ll publicize that as well, probably like on social media and stuff where people can go in some of like they order that food, like the money can go towards the principal’s pantry as well.

Wendy: Yeah, so you do like a spirit night and then you say this is for Provo High or whatever and then they donate a certain percentage. Well, I will be paying attention to that because I am always having late nights and so I might as well go eat dinner and benefit all this great work that you guys are doing. So this is fantastic. So I noticed, I think there’s a QR code, right outside. And so we’re just going to click on that. And then that’s how I can make a donation.

Aubrey: Yep.

Wendy: Is that what I do? Okay. So if I put that out on my social media, then, then people could just click on that and they could start to make donations and I’ll be the first to be happy to start that. So that sounds awesome. Yeah. Is there anything else you would like to share? What have you learned from this process? Like, how has it changed you, maybe, in this process?

Jacob: We’ve spent the past two days in that box and so all there is to think about is just food drive, food drive, food drive. And it’s really cool seeing, um, like we’ve had parents come up to us and be really interested in it. And, um, like lots of people have been wanting to donate and they think it’s great. And kids are going home and telling their parents about it and gathering their things. Which is just really cool to see.

Wendy: That’s good. What about you Aubrey?

Aubrey: Um, I mean, I think it’s just helped me personally being in like the box and just in the food drive Just helping more be like just aware of people around me because you know there’s so much need in our community and I think it’s just amazing and to be a part of like the food drive and be able to kind of just help give back a little bit Just, it’s been awesome.

Wendy: Well, and you start realizing how much we’re all connected, right? And if we take good care of each other, like, it just makes for a much, a much better place, right, when we do that. So, I, I just really admire the work that you’re doing and really appreciate it. And I’m gonna do my part to see how I can also help. So, thank you so much for being on our show today. It’s been a pleasure to have you.

Aubrey and Jacob: Thanks for having us:

Wendy: Yeah. You guys are awesome. Okay.

Thank you everyone for joining me for this episode of What’s Up with the Sup. As always, all episodes will be posted on the district website, YouTube, and anywhere you get your podcasts. If you have any topics or questions you would like us to discuss on the podcast, please email us at podcast@provo.edu.

Please join us next week for a very special episode of What’s Up with the Sup. I will be speaking with Isabella Leite. A senior at Provo High who has gone from student to teacher as she has developed a curriculum entirely in Portuguese aimed at educating teenagers about intimate partner abuse. Until then everyone, I hope you have a great week.