Snaps For What?
Some Sequoyah students from Paula Thomas’s Spanish 3 class “Snapping to That”
When you hear snapping, you might think of poetry circles, community groups, activist circles, or hippie things, but if you’re a Sequoyah high school student, you most definitely think about… high school. Although some think Sequoyah has snapped since its roots at the K-8 – and snapped a lot – this tradition is unique to the high school. So how did this tradition start? Is it because we’re hippies? Why does snapping happen, what does it mean, and how has it evolved?
The Barefoot Times spoke with high school director Marc Alongi, a founding administrator of the high school. “I think it came from our morning meetings in our first year,” Along said of snapping’s origins. “ We were a relatively small group sitting in the circle, and when people wanted to express appreciation for something…clapping felt a bit formal. So I think… it just started happening.” Humanities teacher Sean Hamidi, who ran Morning Meeting during the second year of the high school, agreed with the spontaneity. “I don’t know that those rules were ever explicitly articulated or whether people were especially hard-nosed about [them],” he said.
Snapping is certainly still popular with students today. Lucy Pettit ’27 noted, “We’re snapping all the time here,” noted Lucy Pettit ‘27. “Now it’s just ingrained into me. When I’m walking, I’ll start snapping. When I’m talking, I’ll start snapping. I can’t stop myself and I don’t even realize I’m doing it.”
So, what does the snapping say about Sequoyah as a community? “I think it’s intimate,” stated Hamidi. “I think it’s familiar… I think those are all distinctly Sequoyah things.” Meanwhile, Alongi said, “it does connect us all in a way where we recognize we’re choosing to snap.”
The Sequoyahn snap is not actually unique to Sequoyah, but as Hamidi noted, “it has echoes of poetry clubs and also sororities.” RJ Sakai, Director of Social Innovation and Co-Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, made a similar outside connection, explaining, “I associate snapping with activist circles or community organizing circles where you often have big conversations happening…and the idea of snapping to show support but not interrupt.”
Obviously, snapping at Sequoyah takes cues from outside sources, but it is also unique to the school and has an effect on how Sequoyah is perceived. Multiple people who were interviewed described snapping as sort of “culty.” However, Sakai related, “a guest at a morning meeting for SIP will say they like that we snap or be surprised, delightfully surprised.” These reactions are vastly different, so it might depend on the newcomers’ background and the context they are entering into.
Wait! But wasn’t there always a snapping-clapping mix present at Morning Meeting? No, Morning Meeting is known for being snap-only, to the extent “you have students standing up and saying, no, you should be snapping, not clapping,” as Alongi put it. Hamidi observed, however, “I think, generally, when you ask young people to not do something it doesn’t go well…I think there’s a good chance asking people not to clap made people more inclined to clap, unfortunately.”
Snapping at Sequoyah exists beyond the realm of Morning Meeting. Paula Thomas’s Spanish 3 class birthed its own form of this tradition. Pettit, one of the eight students in the class, describes this new tradition: “We were wondering how to say ‘snaps to that’ in Spanish, and Paula, the wonderful person that she is, looked it up. The verb chasquear means to snap. So now we say ‘chasquidos por eso,’ which translates to ‘snaps to that,’ and it's become an inside joke.” However, according to Pettit, “it’s a spoof. It’s kind of a parody of like, ‘Oh, we snap here all the time, we’re such hippies, yada yada yada.’ And there’s kind of a self-awareness in that. We’re snapping for the sake of laughing at ourselves.” When asked if she thought Sequoyah could learn from Spanish 3, Pettit said, “We Sequoyahns could be a lot better at laughing at ourselves and our traditions.”
Even though this spoof is lovingly mocking Sequoyah, it might capture some of the heart of the original snappers – the need to express emotions. Pettit explained, “When someone says ‘chasquidos por eso,’ [everyone else] also says ‘chasquidos por eso.’ And then everyone snaps together and we all laugh.” This new tradition never fails to bring smiles and encouragement, suggesting that even as Sequoyah’s snaps change over time, the practice of snapping itself is part of the fabric of the school.
For Alongi, snapping is ultimately about community. He observed, “It’s not about clapping and snapping. It’s actually… about what the community has created in… times when we gather. And what does that help us understand about the ways in which we connect?” So maybe this question was easy to answer: Sequoyah is the hippie school that’s in touch with its emotions. But it can’t be that simple. Sequoyah has created a community norm to express emotions that can be shared collectively. As Thomas’s Spanish 3 class says, “Chasquidos por eso!”