Among the most active clubs at Morton East are the snowball, weightlifting, SHARK and Otaku clubs.

According to Understood.org, after-school clubs are a way where students can learn valuable skills that will help them later in life.  Clubs teach students social skills, and allow them to find a place where they fit in and can be themselves.  Some after school programs also help  support academic needs.

Learning hive explains that clubs teach soft skills:  communication skills, social skills, attitudes, social and emotional intelligence, and character traits.

According to Pikmykid, after school activities are a great way for students “to participate in a safe and productive environment.” In this case after school activities would be a great source of help to students better socialize and gain confidence.

Snowball is an active Morton club with about 30 members.  Snowball meets every Thursday at 3:30 in Mr. Elkin’s room (322) for about an hour.  Anyone is welcome to join.

“I have been in snowball for 2 years; I began my freshman year, and I am a teen staff this year. Snowball is my second home and I know it will always be open to me and everybody! Once you are part of it, you feel so comfortable that you don’t want to leave. This is why I wanted to become a teen staff because I wanted to make an impact on somebody’s life/day. Snowball will forever be mine and other’s safe place. We get to know each other and our teen staff, then we play games, songs, and icebreakers. Snowball is a club where you can make connections and make life lasting friendships,” sophomore student Alexandra Alamos said.

With different information student Richard Carmona had this to say.

“My name is Richard Carmona and I am a member of Weightlifting club.  I have been in weightlifting club for 2 and a half years. But we are an open and fun environment to be in, you get to make plenty of friends, learn many new exercises to help you stay healthy and we make plans to go on field trips and meet body builders. I really enjoy meeting new people and teaching them how to lift weights properly, so they won’t hurt them and stay healthy. I also like the fact that everyone is always positive and there are no problems. There are a little/more people coming to the club or who are originally there and the energy between students is always the same positive energy. I’d say around the number of students that come during the week would be from 15-20 students. We meet two days a week, Tuesdays, and Thursdays after school from 3:30-5:00. We start with everyone scanning their ids with the teacher then we have everyone meet in a circle then start with warmups and after the warmups we have people do their own thing but if people want to work out, they will meet with the leaders so we can teach them” said senior student Richard Carmona.

Student Evelin Salgado said this.

“My name is Evelin Salgado and I am a member of S.H.A.R.K. Club. I have been in this club for three years that includes this year. YESS!! Of course I would definitely recommend this club because they do so many things to help with animals like going to shelters or doing drives for the animals shelter or raising money for them we also do some portraits for the dogs at the animal shelter to hope and help them get adopted. Its just a very nice club its good atmosphere and its good time, making the portraits for the dogs at the animal shelters, a lot of students go the club to the point where there are no more seats and you just have sitting on anything else they can find or some just like to stand sometimes that we do is mostly go over the agenda like this that are coming up or this that have been postponed recently what we did was vote for a club president, vice president and a secretary for the club. I feel like compared to now and when I first started going not a lot has changed its stayed the same we meet one a week Mondays to Wednesday for about 30-40 minutes from the whole club and what we do it would have to be separating animals rights telling people that animals just like humans, people they feel emotions, pain just like we do and that they shouldn’t be treated any differently just because they can’t advocate for themselves and just getting them to open their minds to change their views on animals and to help them, care a little more for them, and to respect them just a little more than they did before with every passing day,” senior student Evelin Salgado said.

“My name is Edgar Moreno and I am part of the otaku club. I have been in otaku for a year and a half I would recommends this club because it’s fun and I would recommend it to people who would love to do this and love anime would enjoy spending time doing what they love. I personally like that the club goes to comic-con and going to tournament for e sports and the anime shows we watch. I would say that have changed is the games have changed they have become less competitive we would play all kinds of games and now we just play regular games and not be so competitive. We would normally play games, watch anime, go to tournaments, go to comic-cons and watch different amines. I would say around 375 students when I first joined after four months, we had 545 students. Every Tuesdays and Thursdays two days a week from 4:00-8:00. We promote the enjoyment of students to have students do what they like to do something they love and it promotes anime,” senior student Edgar Moreno said.

In a survey of four teachers each teacher had this to say about their club.

“I am Mr, Elkins and i used to sponsor for Otaku club. Aside from a lot of students coming to the club after school then we had kids bringing video game systems every day and every week we had three to four students brining systems so yeah it was pretty popular to hang out and play videogames. Then we had more video game people then compared to now because of Esports took away a lot of the video game people so now we just have more of comic books and anime video game people together but there are less of those people who would bring consoles since they went to Esports. That is a difference between then and now, we have less students coming due to Esports gaining popularity too. We’ve lost some popularity due to Esports. But we still are probably the largest club. We are getting around 20-30 students consistently per week it varies between 28-30 students.”  Mr. Elkins had this to say.

Adding to the comments about otaku Mr. Elkins also had this to say,

“I am Mr. Elkins leader of snowball. when snowball first started it had many different sponsors many different teachers were in charge of the club but most of the time led by students. the students will make decisions of how the theme will be for that year. overall there is a core to it where only small things have changed the ways it works. overall it still the exact same club at heart. for snowball we have around 35+ students come per week 3 we have 25 students average joining on a busy day it would be 40-45 people per week.” Mr. Elkins had this to say about snowball.

“My name is Ms. Berezniak I am in charge of S.H.A.R.K Club, I would say the amount of students we get per week pretty much varies around 25 students and now that the club has been around for a while students have decreased in coming. We normally do a visit to shelters we normally make portraits for the animals as a way of support. We haven’t gone to a shelter this year, we normally do that later in the year, the diffirence between it first started was the very first meeting there was around 90+ students to now every year it always decreases and I normally only have 12 students who constantly come to the meetings I feel like one of the main reasons that shark club is popular is the reason that its about animals and animals can catch a lot of people’s attention and sympathy.” Said Ms. Berezniak.

“My name is Ms. Guthiem, I am one of the teachers that is involved with Weightlifting club. I would say a difference between when the club first started to now is it had a lot more participants- there were more off-season athletes and students who already actively lifted, but needed more space to practice. Club is still very busy with lots of student interest, but it is more of an ‘open gym’ space than a structured learning space- students have enjoyed this more. We usually get about 60 students a week, which is low for us- the first year we had about 85+ students every time we met.” Said Ms. Guthiem.