Bucket Bashers

By: Annebeth Ahrenholz

Who knew dumping a bucket full of ice water over your head could raise over $100 million? That is what the ALS ice bucket challenge has done, and now senior leadership and the high school teachers have joined in the cause to raise money for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

The original idea came from social studies teacher Chad Van Cleve, who brought the idea to senior leadership, and senior leadership made it happen. Van Cleve thought this would be a meaningful and different thing to do that would bring students and teachers together. The senior leadership organized the ice bucket challenge by getting ice donated and advertising the effort. All of their hard work paid off, when the challenge raised $252 during the lunch shifts on Friday, Sept. 5.

The money will go to fight Lou Gehrig’s Disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

Emily Wheeler is one of the teachers that advises senior leadership and helped a lot in putting this on at school. “It was a very affective way to bring students and staff together doing something different and effective,” Wheeler said.

Brian Winkel’s broadcast journalism class is also making a video of it to capture what happened and to motivate and challenge other schools to partake in their own ice bucket challenge at their schools. Other high schools around Cedar Falls heard about this happening at our school, and want to do the same at their own schools.