Gin Pimentel

Seniors Dani Hunter and Lux Robles paint Simba for the Class of 2025 banner, following 2025’s Homecoming theme of the year: “Hakuna Matata.” “We first started out by blocking out the colors, then painting over it,” Hunter said.

Homecoming: a time for students to show their school spirit through activities such as pep rallies, the football game and the school banner. Class of 2025 placed last freshman year and first senior year, marking clear improvement across their Jefferson years. 

Senior Zara Callahan said that there was a clear improvement between the freshman and senior year banners for Class of 2025 due to better coordination and timing. 

“Up until this year, we would only have about two hours to complete the entire painting, but this year we got one to two weeks to complete it,” Callahan said. “We also realized that attempting to do anything with human-like figures on the banner is very hard to get it to look right.” 

The banner consists of the Senior class theme of Hakuna Matata from “The Lion King.” Callahan states that each person had a specific task for a part of the banner to manage it in smaller steps.

”Each person had kind of a specificity for the banner like lettering or painting the trees, figures and outlines,” Callahan said. 

Improvement has been visible through methods of different materials. Senior Samrika Maharjan has been doing the Homecoming banner since sophomore year and stated that a change in brush strokes and composition can change the perspective of the piece.

“Better brush strokes and compositions overall have a major factor with why we did better throughout the four years of homecoming,” Maharjan said.

Improvement was also shown through an advancement in art. This year, senior Celeste Tran had painted the banner for the first time and is currently taking Studio Art three.

“Having an understanding of value and light composition really helped us have the best banner by far with the level of detail that we have achieved,” Tran said.

Another thing that could have led to the improvement of banners over the years was teamwork. Maharjan has been painting the banner since her sophomore year.

“Our teamwork has gotten better in general and more coordinated than the previous years. We were able to have better coordination through planning. For example, we planned when we were going to meet up and everyone was able to be involved,” Maharjan said.