With help from friendly strangers in Pullman, teacher Yvonne Cook’s fifth grade class at Palomino Intermediate School in Phoenix has adopted WSU in a schoolwide rivalry that pits classes and their chosen universities against each other. The students wear WSU t-shirts, belt out the Cougar fight song, display a Cougar banner – and enjoy razzing the University of Washington Huskies.
“The rivalry has been really fun,” said Palomino teacher Shannon Woodard, who helped organize the effort to inspire kids in a low-income, gang-troubled community to attend college. “The WSU and UW classrooms are right next to each other and they try to chant their university songs louder than their neighbor.”
It was Woodard who wrote the WSU College of Education, seeking someone who might be willing to track down Cougar-themed items for students. She was referred to Tariq Akmal, a professor who specializes in middle school education. He agreed to help and sought ideas from college program coordinator Amy Cox.
“Amy was marvelous and not only donated pencils, stickers, posters, erasers, a Cougar banner, etc., but also urged me to contact Pullman’s Crimson & Gray store to see if they would donate t-shirts,” said Akmal.
Store manager Keith McIvor came through with 35 logo t-shirts. That was an especially big deal for the fifth graders, Woodard said, because not every class was able to wear its university’s logo. The new Cougar fans like the logo so much that they plan to paint it in the school hallway.
WSU officials have granted them the one-time rights to use the copyrighted design.
Sol Jensen, WSU director of recruiting and marketing, contributed face decals to the care package that the College of Education sent to Palomino Intermediate.
“Sol also noted that the WSU representative for that area would probably stop in there as she ventured through that part of Arizona,” Akmal said.
Woodard and a fellow teacher came up with the idea for the university adoptions after learning about No Excuses University, a national network of schools working to inspire students to see college in their future.
“We showed the ‘Tournament of Champions’ commercial that the Pac-10 put out, and our Pac-10 classrooms ask to watch it all the time,” she said. “It is too amazing to put into words how our school is changing. This has become a vehicle to college for our at-risk students.”