Revere High School (RHS)’s clubs came together to transform the A100 hallway for Boo At The School, where Bath Elementary families participated in themed activities and donated canned goods.
Boo At The School took place on October 29 from 5:30-7:30 pm at the RHS building. RHS’s Student Council hosted the event with help from other clubs and groups including Student Council, National Art Honor Society (NAHS), Active Minds, Project Love, Recycling Club, Empower Women and many others. Many students and staff stayed after school to set up until the event began and stayed late after 7:30 to clean up. Each room in the A100 hallway, along with three rooms in the main hallway, featured its own unique themed activities and offered candy. The families came in costumes and brought their trick-or-treating supplies. Admission required one canned good that was donated to St. Vincent’s Church.
After realizing Bath Elementary lacked its own Halloween celebration while Richfield Elementary had its Trunk-or-Treat event, Student Council and their co-adviser Beth D’Amico proposed resurfacing Boo At The School to RHS Principal Doug Faris, who agreed without hesitation.
“It’s an opportunity for us to connect with another school in our district, and we chose Bath Elementary because there’s already a big community event for the Richfield kiddos. Bath didn’t really have anything,” Faris said.
Initially a “Haunted High School,” Boo At The School was revived in 2024 after a long break and reimagined for the younger children at Bath Elementary School.
“We revived it from maybe a ten-year hiatus. My kids all went to Boo At The School when they were little, and the Student Council would always do it,” D’Amico said.
Boo At The School offered a wide range of activities, including but not limited to a haunted maze, photo booth, guess-the-instrument, paper towel roll bowling, a movie room, fortune teller making station and more. The execution of the event required planning, leadership and collaboration. The Student Council managed everything from room assignments to posters and sign-in sheets, ensuring each group had a different activity, decorations, candy and supervision. They designed the flyer, picked the date back in May and promoted it. Faris claimed little to no credit for the logistics and said the kids “do all the work.”
“What makes Boo At The School unique from other events is that it’s totally 100% run by kids. You have the art club, you have the Mu Alpha Theta, you’ve got the Student Council, you have Empower Women, you have Project Love, you have all these groups that take time and give back to our friends at the elementary,” Faris said.
Student Council President Isabelle Aiken took responsibility in giving her best efforts to make Boo At The School entertaining for the kids as well as making sure the RHS high schoolers did the same. She compared their Boo At The School jobs to Disney World mascots, trying to keep the energy high and exciting. She encouraged students to maintain a positive attitude for the kids.
“Even though it is right after school, try to be excited and compliment costumes and talk to them because it’s more fun for them with the more effort you put,” Aiken said to the other students during preparation.
When receiving an email from D’Amico inviting clubs to attend Boo At The School, club Project Love’s teacher adviser Stephanie Mason figured that since they had not done the event before and the club is trying to get a lot more involvement in school activities this year, they might as well “jump in.” The club decided to teach the kids how to make fortune tellers with Halloween-themed jokes inside.
“We were trying to think of something that we could do within 10 minutes that would entertain that age group,” Mason said.
Project Love’s set up process shows for the other clubs’ similar experiences. Many kids helped decorate from when the school day ended to around 8:00 pm to clean up. The Student Council provided pizza for all the volunteers after school.
“We started at 2:30 and we worked all the way until 5:30. We brought decorations from home, and we hung decorations from the ceiling. We decorated the whiteboards, we put Halloween visuals on the TV, we blew up balloons and made balloon bouquets for the tables, and we made streamers for the kids to walk through. Lots of decorations,” Mason said.
Faris praised the students for their creativity and independence, noting that each participating group gave Bath Elementary families something different to experience. The Student Council reached out to the League of Leaders, Revere’s student representatives, and teacher advisers of each club and group, and they invited everyone to sponsor a room with an activity of their choice.
The Student Council sought enough participation to fill every room in the A100 wing. They met that goal and even expanded to three more rooms in the main hallway as well. The Student Council additionally aimed to collect as many canned goods as possible to support local families in need. Faris later confirmed that RHS collected 89 cans.
The Student Council’s maze was one of the most attended and complimented activities. Senior Tommy Long came up with the activity and brought it to life with the help of other Student Council members. They combined two classrooms by taking down the dividing wall and set up folding walls to form the maze with halloween decorations at every turn. Faris stated he went through the maze four times.
“I think the most popular activity would have been the maze. . . . I heard a lot of people talking about it,” Aiken said.
RHS science teacher Joshua Schafer stated his children could not wait to return after attending Boo At The School last year. His daughter’s laughter in the maze and his kids’ excitement for the band’s guess-the-instrument activity reminded him of how meaningful these simple moments can be for kids and parents alike.
“It’s something families can do together in a safe environment, and it shows how caring our high school students are,” Schaefer said.
Boo At The School was an event that offered positive experiences to everyone involved on both the guest and volunteer ends. Along with the high schoolers’ responsibilities came lessons applicable to multiple areas of life.
“The high schoolers learned how to plan, organize and understand how they had to clean up and respect other teachers’ classrooms. They also enhanced their communication skills by interacting with parents as well as young kids,” Mason said.
These outcomes on the student side coincided with effects that reached beyond volunteer tasks.
“It really brings the community together. It gives [the kids] a look into what the high school kids can do, how nice and caring the high school kids can be. It forms a sense of community in general,” Schaefer said.
The high schoolers became role models for many of the elementary kids. Even with their busy lives, around forty high schoolers dedicated their afternoon and evening to Boo At The School. Parents repeatedly expressed to Faris how impressed they were by the students’ enthusiasm and leadership.
“When I talk to the parents of the elementary kids that were walking out and they stop me and tell me how amazing it was for the high school kids to interact with their kids, that means so much to me because it reminds me of why we do what we do. . . . It reminds me of what truly is important as far as community and families and memories. The kids that were here, there’s no doubt in my mind that when they come to high school, they’re going to want to do Boo At The School because they went to it now,” Faris said.
A memorable moment for D’Amico was when she saw a former student of her daughter’s class and the student told her Boo At The School was just like being in D’Amico’s daughter’s class where “she was having fun even though she was learning along the way.”
Multiple groups already started taking notes on what to improve for next year. There was lower attendance this year than last, but D’Amico hopes to enhance the event next year with more interactive experiences such as a schoolwide scavenger hunt or a prize-based “passport” system that encourages kids to visit every room before leaving.
“We’re talking about making it more of an experience and having all the clubs work together with a common goal. We discussed a scavenger hunt of some sort and making it more of a game so there’s a prize at the end,” D’Amico said.
As candy wrappers crinkled and decorations came down, Boo At The School left behind a reminder of how simple acts of service and school unity can bring an entire community together.
