Students (from left) Susan Neff, Peter Houser and Jacob Herman sat in the bleachers at a school assembly on April 25 and used their school laptops to navigate to the Vans Custom Culture shoe design contest website to vote for Wrangell High School's entry. Five art students designed two pairs of shoes to reflect the culture of Wrangell, and the entry is among the top 50 finalists nationwide for cash prizes for school art programs. Online voting ends Friday.
Art and music teacher Tasha Morse talks to students about voting in the Vans Custom Culture art contest. She encouraged kids on April 25 to share the link with friends, family and social media followers to garner more votes.
High school students were urged to use their smartphones and laptops during an assembly for once.
It was announced last Monday that the painted and decorated shoes entered into the Vans Custom Culture design contest had won Wrangell High School a spot in the national top 50 and a chance at $50,000.
Staff and students are calling on family, friends, neighbors and the online universe to go to https://customculture.vans.com/, click the "VOTE NOW" button and choose Wrangell. Public voting closes at 4 p.m. Alaska time this Friday.
"We get $500 for our class (in the school budget) to get what we need for a year. So, think about how far $50,000 could go for us to make a difference in our art program," said Tasha Morse, the art and music teacher for the high school, when talking to students at the assembly. "This is a big opportunity. Even if we get second through fifth place, we get $15,000. That's a lot of money."
Morse urged students to broadcast the voting link on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and other social media platforms. She reminded students that they are representing the school and community, much like the sports teams when they travel for competition.
If Wrangell amasses enough votes with its Tlingit- and Wrangell scenery-inspired shoes, it will win a spot in the top five. Those winners will be announced from May 9 to May 13. The grand prize winner will be announced the week of May 16.
"I kind of wasn't expecting the amount of support that we've gotten in the past couple of days," said Rowen Wiederspohn, who was part of the team of art students who worked on the shoes. "I've been telling people all day to vote, and every single person is like, 'Already have. Already done it.' Everybody knows."
Wiederspohn worked on the project with Paige Baggen, Sophia Hagelman, Nathale Keith, Cassady Cowan and Morse. He also supplied the fur for the red shoes with black form line drawings and forget-me-not beaded flowers.
Morse told students to think about how many people follow them on social media and to multiply that by the number of students in the school to illustrate the kind of reach they can have. She mentioned the reach of the local and statewide news outlets. She also said the Wrangell entry had some star power behind it when Portugal. The Man, a band out of Wasilla, shared the story on its social media platforms.
"We're going to win," Morse said.
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