With Thanksgiving 2023 in the rearview, the beginning of Dec. is a good time to reflect on all that we have to be grateful for. Although the holiday may not be as loudly broadcasted at Mountain View as Halloween or Christmas, our school still finds small but meaningful ways to give back; first by evaluating what we’re grateful for this year. A poll of a few Mountain View students revealed several wholesome answers.

“I’m grateful for family,” Haddy Herring answered.

“Our amazing friend group,” Hagen Smith said.

“I’m thankful for Kella, my little sister,” Moira McLean answered.

Students were also asked what Mountain View does to observe Thanksgiving.

Both Emma Buer and Henry Wheeler described a “gratitude tree” in the choir room. “A Christmas tree with leaves pasted over it,” Wheeler says, “so no one can call it a Christmas tree.”

Buer further explained, “The thankful tree…was a way to remind us to be thankful every day when we saw it, as well as to show our gratitude by writing things down.”

In response to the same question, Ellie McClellan said, “A thing that the music program started doing this year is that we wrote papers for the administrative staff to let them know that they help us out a lot.”

Landon Godbold answered, “This is one of the very few schools where everybody is close and everybody can be grateful for their friends…even though everybody has their own people, they’re still together.”

From messages of gratitude on allegedly-not-Christmas-trees to thank you notes for the staff, Mountain View has made sure to give back this year and show how grateful we are. When one embraces the messages of appreciation and thanks, the Thanksgiving season can be a humbling, enriching time to reflect on all there is to be grateful for.