Community adopts Poplar Bluff seniors

Parents and community members are working to make seniors at Poplar Bluff High School feel as though their last year is special despite school closures due to COVID-19 and a postponed graduation and prom.

Amy Shirrell, who’s daughter Elizabeth is a senior, was approached by a friend asking to “adopt” Elizabeth.

“That was the first I knew of anything like this,” Shirrell said.

The question prompted her to reach out to other parents of seniors and set up an adopt-a-senior group on Facebook. Through this group, seniors or parents of seniors are able to list their information and get adopted. The information listed includes a picture of the student, what they’re interested in or activities they’ve participate in.

“It’s not an actual adoption,” Shirrell said. “It basically means they’re going to show that senior that they care, and it could be cards — notes of encouragement and things like that. It could be care packages. It’s basically up to the adopter what level of participation that they want and are able to do, but we just want to make sure that the seniors know that they are thought of during this time.”

The group has 891 members and 129 seniors have been adopted.

“This time of year in school, the seniors are doing things that they have worked their entire school career to achieve whether that’s sports, or music, or JROTC or different contests and competitions academically, anything and everything that they’ve worked really hard to achieve; they’re winning awards and getting recognized publicly for the things that they’ve accomplished. All of that isn’t happening,” Shirrell said. “So, this group, the goal of it, is to make up for that as best we can, by just letting them know that we care.”

Shirrell said while doing research into this kind of program, she came across national groups that do the same thing, but those groups had around 16,000 members and it made her concerned about the safety of the seniors.

As such, the group she made is for Poplar Bluff seniors. When somebody requests to join the group, they’re prompted to explain their connection to the area.

“We (group administrators) personally look through all of the people who get invited to be in the group and make sure that they are actually local people or at least connected to Poplar Bluff in some way, not just somebody off the internet,” she said. “We don’t allow random people in the group, and we’re trying to keep it safe.”

Along with the adoption part of the group, Shirrell said she’s had local businesses or individuals offer to donate items for the students. As such, the admins are also running contests for the seniors. Through these, they’re asked questions such as who their most influential teacher has been or to draw their favorite cafeteria food.

Shirrell said students have also posted pictures to the group of the care packages or cards they’ve received.

“The community has showed up in a big way to support our seniors,” Shirrell said, tearing up at the response. “We have not gone in search of donations or things like that. People just keep messaging us saying ‘I would like to donate something to help our seniors.’”

Teachers have also joined the group, sharing memories of the graduating class and messages to them.

Part of the way through organizing this group, Shirrell said, she came to the realization of what this group has become.

“I realized that this is kind of becoming like an online yearbook so to speak, because we have pictures and things that tell us about the senior class,” she said.

The group can be found on Facebook by searching Adopt a Senior 2020 Poplar Bluff.