Month: October 2018

October 26, 2018

Hello everyone! For those of you who don’t know me, I am Stephanie Hamilton and I am the Media & Marketing Specialist with My School Dance. Now that the weather is finally dropping and we’re starting to see the stores get ready for holiday mode, that means one thing. We’re getting close to Winter Formal season everyone!

Winter Formal is usually known as a formal dance for high school students held anytime within December-February. This dance is usually known as Turnabout, Winter Formal, or Sadie Hawkins. For many schools, the Winter Formal dance is the dance where the girls are supposed to ask the guys to be their date. When I was in high school, we had a Turnabout dance and I knew how hard it was to come up with a creative way to ask my date. At the time I worked at a pizza place, so I sent my boyfriend a pizza with “TB?” on it made out of pepperoni slices. This idea made sense with where I worked, but a lot of people struggle coming up with ideas so I wanted to provide a few of my favorite types of dance proposals:

• The One with the Scavenger Hunt–This is one of the best proposals because it hypes up the proposal by sending your potential date on a hunt to search for clues. You can work with your teachers and friends to help leave specific clues to give to your date. It’s always more fun when there is more people involved. This proposal may take more work and time, but in the end you’re more than likely to get a yes. 
• The One with the Foodposal– Let’s be serious, who doesn’t like getting free food? Think of your potential date’s favorite food/restaurant and come up with a creative slogan that incorporates it. Some of the common food choices that I’ve seen have been pizza, Chick-fil-A, ice cream, cookie cakes, McDonalds, and more. 
• The One with the Post-Its– This was the one dance proposal I always wished someone would have done for me. If you know the type of car your potential date drives, take a whole bunch of post-its and write “Formal, TB, Sadies?” on it. Then take all of those post-its and put it all over their car to the point where you can’t see any parts of the car. This may take some time and commitment, but it will be an awesome proposal. Then they’re forced to take each post-it off of their car and they can read the message you put. 
• The One with the Audience– If you don’t get easily embarrassed, ask your date to formal in front of everyone. This could be during your school’s basketball game where you have it on the scoreboard. It could be in class when it comes up on the powerpoint slide. It could even be in the auditorium during a school play’s intermission. Whichever way you choose to do it, it shows that you have confidence and aren’t afraid to have fun.

However you end up asking your potential date to your school’s Winter Formal dance, go big or go home. Personally, I feel like the dance proposals always set up the mood of how the dance is going to go. You might as well get creative and have fun doing some crazy proposal. For those of you who want more ideas check out My School Dance’s Pinterest Page. We have boards dedicated to strictly Winter Formal or Sadie Hawkins proposals. Also, if your school needs help planning and managing a big event like your formal dance, reach out to My School Dance. There’s no cost for schools to use My School Dance as their dance management platform! 

Start figuring out the type of formal proposal you want to do, and get moving now. It may seem early, but a good proposal can take a lot of time! 

Contact:

Stephanie Hamilton

833-336-8656

October 19th, 2018

Hi everyone! I’m Stephanie Hamilton and I am the Media & Marketing Specialist with My School Dance. The social interactions between today’s teens are a lot different than they used to be. If you haven’t already noticed more teenagers than ever constantly have their faces buried in their cell phones. This is a reoccurring issue that needs to be fixed. But how?

My solution is to have more “classroom bonding sessions/events” for teenagers whether this consists of something to do in the classroom or a type of field trip. This allows the students the chance to interact with one another and participate in a fun activity. It’s important to find activities that will allow the students to not constantly be on their cell phones.  Since we are in the month of October, I included some festive bonding activities below to take back to your school:

• Zombie Laser Tag–Laser Tag is a great way to connect with others, while having fun. This would be a great event for a class that is competitive and wants to have a challenge. The best part about laser tag is you split up into teams and work as a group to win. Plus, it’s even more fun if you can dress up like Zombies to get in the Halloween spirit.
• Murder Mystery Party–This is one of my favorite things to do as a bonding experiment. Have you ever heard of the escape rooms that are popping up all over? This is similar to that. The Murder Mystery Party is like the game Clue where you work with the people in your group to figure out who is the murderer. This one is great because you have to learn to communicate effectively in order to solve the crime. It’s all about strategically thinking and solving clues to get the answer.
• Costume Contest–The students can come to class and bring their creative side to this event by having the best costume. This is fun because they put in a lot of work to have the best costume and they gain confidence in themselves. A lot of teenagers are competitive so it’s fun to have some friendly contests like this to get people talking and laughing with one another.
• Halloween Dance–Hosting dances always allows for more social interaction between teenagers. Why not host a Halloween themed one? The best part is you can double up and have students wear costumes and have a costume contest.

What’s nice about having bonding events is, for the most part, the students won’t be glued to their phones. They might take a few selfies here and there, but the events listed above require them to interact face-to-face. This time of year is the perfect time to get students bonding with one another and finding activities to do is a piece of cake!

If your school needs help managing events like these, My School Dance is the perfect platform to do so! My School Dance is used for any ticketed event that is for the students. If you haven’t signed your school up yet, create your My School Dance account for free and start planning your classroom bonding activities!

Contact:

Stephanie Hamilton

833-336-8656

October 12th, 2018

Hey there! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Stephanie Hamilton and I am the Media & Marketing Specialist with My School Dance. Thinking back to when I was in school, going on field trips was always the best. In Elementary School, it seemed like we were going on field trips every other month. When I got to high school, that changed. Throughout my 4 years of high school, I went on one field trip. Nowadays, I barely hear about high school students going on field trips. Why is that?

Usually the top two reasons are because of money and the planning process. If schools don’t have money to dedicate to class trips, just find field trips that are inexpensive or free. Field trips don’t have to consist of visiting the most expensive place ever. Also, if there is a more expensive class trip inform the students that they have an option on whether they want to attend since they’re paying for it. If the planning process at your school is an unorganized mess, just sign your school up with My School Dance for free. We’ll help organize and plan all trips for your school! Plus, you can have digital permission forms and sell tickets online! Below I have listed 5 simple, yet fun Fall field trip ideas:

• Fright Fest: Six Flags Great America hosts a “Halloween themed” event at their amusement park. Students can get discounted tickets from many local businesses. This trip would be perfect for a smaller group of students.
• Pumpkin Patch: The pumpkin patch is the perfect “fall” field trip. Most patches have multiple things to do such as hay-rides, animal farms, apple picking, corn mazes, and more.
• Hiking: This is the perfect solution for schools who say field trips are too expensive. Many schools can go hiking and learn about nature for free!
• Fruit Festivals: There are so many festivals going on during the fall. This would be another cheap and fun trip to do with your class.
• Zoo: The Zoo is the perfect field trip if you want to just enjoy a day out with your students. There are usually student discounts and some zoos are even free to visit. 

Many of these ideas can be done with the entire class or even just a smaller group. Personally, I think high schools need to start having more class trips because it allows students to explore something different and get out of the classroom environment. If schools don’t like the idea of having to plan and manage the field trip process, My School Dance can help. We don’t only do dances! My School Dance can be used for any event that is geared towards the students and allows you to sell tickets. For example, one of our schools is planning a Disney Trip and is selling tickets through My School Dance to make their process a lot easier!

If you want your school to have more trips for students, but need a better planning process visit My School Dance today. There’s no cost for schools to use it too! If you haven’t signed your school up yet, create your My School Dance account for free and start planning your spooky trips!

Contact:

Stephanie Hamilton

833-336-8656

October 5th, 2018

Hello everyone! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Stephanie Hamilton and I am the Media & Marketing Specialist with My School Dance. I’m sure many of you are wondering what’s the big deal with using a cash box? Isn’t that the only way to collect money? Well, no it’s not. The actual issue of using a cash box might surprise some of you. I know it surprised me.

When it comes to selling tickets for school dances, they are usually sold during the school’s lunch period. As for the person in charge of selling tickets, every school is different. Some schools have a specific teacher selling tickets and some even have students selling them. This designated person is left in charge of handling the money and the cash box. How do schools ensure that this person isn’t stealing some of the funds? It sounds crazy, I know. Who would steal from the school dance cash box? The answer is a lot of people actually.

More and more stories about teachers, students, and faculty are coming out in the news about how money was stolen from the dance fund. One teacher was accused of stealing over $2,104 from three school dance funds. Another stole THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS from a Homecoming fund to go gamble at a casino. If you google stolen dance funds there will be pages of stories in different news publications. This is a recurring issue that needs to result in the action of a new way to sell tickets. Cash boxes might have been beneficial at one point in time, but times are changing and it’s time for a more secure process to be put in place.

My School Dance is an online platform for schools to plan and manage all dances and events. The neat thing about My School Dance is all tickets are sold online. No more worrying about the cash box. All funds are deposited immediately into your school’s bank account. This way nobody has access to stealing anything. Plus, now your school doesn’t need volunteers to sell tickets at lunch. Our secure payment process is the same one that Amazon, Facebook, and Open Table use. By utilizing online ticket sales, there will be less trips to the bank to deposit funds.

If you want to ensure your school manages their school dance funds in the safest way, use My School Dance. The best part, it’s free for schools to use! If you haven’t signed your school up yet, create your My School Dance account today!

Contact:

Stephanie Hamilton

833-336-8656