As history teacher Paul Martini looked down at the dish in front of him—a horrible combination of a wet slab of Spam topped with Swedish Fish and chocolate sauce—the chefs responsible for this dish waited anxiously for his feedback. Unfortunately for the duo, they had neglected to use one of their main mandatory ingredients— yellow mustard— a mistake that would cause them to be disqualified.

As crazy as that sounds, this is a weekly occurrence during Mount Pisgah Upper School’s Thursday fresh air period. Fresh air is a designated time built into the week’s schedule for students to have fun, play games, worship, and essentially just breathe a breath of fresh air.

“It gives students the chance to have a moment to reflect on and spend time with the Lord or work on their faith and if they want that, it’s there for them.” student life coordinator Melanie Murphy said. With fresh air being virtual during the 2020-2021 school year, the production of the weekly meetings took a lot more planning and hands-on help, especially from student life coordinator David Darnell.

“I would spend that week recording teachers’ messages, and kind of doing some editing and then we recorded live worship songs from the band that we then edited and combined it all for Thursday mornings,” Darnell said. “There’s a lot that happened behind the scenes, but we did the best we could, and I think it was meaningful. I think everyone would say it was still a breath of fresh air.”

The Upper school Fresh Air team also played a huge part in helping this production of virtual Fresh Air and helping it come together and making it interactive and fun for the students.

“Planning fresh air virtually was really hard for us because we had to brainstorm games where you can incorporate the crowd and incorporate the fresh air team itself, so we had to figure out ways in which we could go from classroom to classroom, and try to make it fun for all the students,” senior Fresh Air team member Sanna Shibley said.

Fresh Air, chapel services return to in-person in upper and middle schools  team member Sanna Shibley. Since COVID-19 hit and caused Fresh Air to be virtual all of last year, the students of Mount Pisgah are filled with excitement to be able to attend live Fresh Air this year.

“It’s just a whole different world when it comes to planning it in person, because our opportunities are so much more endless, and we’re all so relieved to be back to normal,” Shibley said.

The Fresh Air period lets students get away from all the stress throughout their week and it allows them to connect with their friends and have a fun break in their day and connect deeper with the Lord.

“For some people it’s a break that involves just some fellowship with each other, for other people it’s a break that involves just having fun.” said Murphy.