After four years of taking English classes, a graduate walks to the stage to grab his diploma wearing a navy blue and bumblebee yellow cord as a reward for their hard work. This new cord represents the National English Honor Society, the newest honor society here at the school.

One student is responsible for bringing the honor society to the school, Amy Kibort, a junior at the school. Kibort had the idea of establishing a National English Honor Society earlier this year due to the circumstances that COVID brought along. 

“During quarantine in March of this year, I started looking into if there was an honor society for English overall. I found that there was. It’s called the National English Honor Society. The more I read about it, I found it was really perfect for what I was looking for,” Kibort said. 

Kibort had hoped to join an honor society since freshman year, but at the time, Rock Canyon did not provide an honor society just for English.

 “The more I read about [NEHS], I found it was really perfect for what I was looking for. In the first week of April, I wrote to Mr. Watkins to see if he knew if there was a way to start a chapter of NEHS at Rock Canyon, or if a chapter had been in existence before and didn’t work out for some reason,” Kibort said.

For sponsors for NEHS, Kibort reached out to English teachers Mr. Watkins and Mr. McBride to help out with the club. 

“Mr. Watkins was my Honors English II teacher. He was immediately supportive of the idea in starting a chapter and I made plans and researched everything I could about NEHS to try and have it launch in the fall of this school year,” Kibort said.

The NEHS’s goal is to be able to recognize students who are excelling in the field of English. However, each school chapter’s goal is different.

“RCHS NEHS members benefit through supplemental development and practice of their skills/talents in language, literature, and writing to help achieve academic and career goals while being recognized for their English accomplishments,” Kibort said.

The National English Honor Society was founded in 2005, and since then has had the mission to recognize those who excel in writing, and further develop those abilities. At the moment, NEHS has over 700 different chapters internationally, most residing in the United States. The NEHS Chapter was approved in early September and is planning to officially start operations after Fall Break, with applications closing in early October. 

NEHS is planning on holding conversations about literary genres and forms of writing, writing opportunities, and contests such as NaNoWriMo, virtual interviews with people in the book industry, and many more events. 

When English is your natural language, sometimes it can be easy to forget how important it really is. Kibort wanted to ensure that people knew the importance of the literature, culture, and meaning of the English language, and she did so by bringing the National English Honor Society to the school. The NEHS coming to school means that students who excel in English can express the importance of the language through various means outside of their English classes.

For more information on NEHS, go to http://www.nehs.us/