The 2020-2021 school year has been a memorable one for many students.
At North Rock Creek, it will be remembered for 100 years.
Friday, March. 12, students gathered with their teachers at the new North Rock Creek athletic facility to bury a time capsule, memorializing the early years of North Rock Creek’s high school.
“We want our grandkids, and our great grandkids, to have a little history about how North Rock Creek High School came about,” superintendent Blake Moody said. “The stories that hopefully are passed down will accompany the objects in the time capsule.”
North Rock Creek high school is a new addition to North Rock Creek schools, gaining state approval in 2016.
“That was a historic event for the state, really,” Moody said. “K-8 schools don’t become K-12s very often. It’s happened six times that I know of in recent history.”
Next year, North Rock Creek will have its first graduating class of high school seniors.
“So, there’s a lot of history happening right now at North Rock Creek, establishing traditions, going from 50 staff members to 150, going from 500 students to 1400 students,” Moody said.
Burying the time capsule aims to preserve this history for future generations of students.
“The time capsule will represent the beginning of our high school, beginning of North Rock Creek High School and where we started and how we started,” middle school counselor and time capsule project coordinator Amber Rosser said. “And it will represent our students, our organizations, our teachers, our families, our community, at the point in time when our high school was established.”
High school sophomore and student council president Hope Hanna agreed.
“In 100 years when they open the time capsule, I hope they know how excited we were about the new building, and all the memories that were created through doing it,” she said.
The capsule project came about through a gift from the Masonic Lodge in Shawnee.
“We had the ceremony for the cornerstone of the building, the Masonic Temple cornerstone,” Moody said.
The Masonic Lodge donated the time capsule and some items to go in the capsule, in Fall 2020.
“Since that time, Mrs. Rosser has reached out to community groups and to school groups and she has gathered up a lot more artifacts to put in the time capsule,” Moody said.
Students helped come up with items to put in the capsule.
“I think the educational value is, when we’re talking to our students about items that they want to include, it really makes them think creatively about the future and what would be something really neat that they could look back on,” Rosser said.
The process of selecting the items encouraged students to consider what they want to remember and preserve of their culture.
“Something that they may want people to know about their culture, or their education, or even their friendships, you know, or different organizations that they’re involved in that they would like people in the future to know kind of what their experiences were like,” Rosser said.
Items buried in the capsule include objects such as an FFA jacket and sports jersey, as well as items from the robotics team, band, basketball team, and national honors society, in addition to footage from North Rock Creek’s digital media class.
“We are also putting together a video for our pre-enrollment that we would normally do in person but since that’s limited a little bit this year we put together a kind of a showcase of our school and so we’re going to put that onto a flash drive and set it in the time capsule as well,” Rosser said.
Technology will most likely have undergone major changes, by the time North Rock Creek’s capsule will be opened.
“I don’t know what it’s going to look like in 100 years but the people that open up the time capsule will get a glimpse of history in North Pott. county at a new high school and take a look at technology and yearbooks and whatever other artifacts we put in a time capsule,” Moody said.
Other items might surprise the capsule’s future openers, for different reasons.
“Well I know they placed a mask in there so hopefully COVID is over by then, so people might be surprised when they see face masks in there,” Hanna said.