Month: November 2018

November 30th, 2018

Hello 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. I know that a lot of teachers are the ones in charge of planning and organizing any type of school trip. This can be a lot of work depending on what the trip is and how many students will be attending. The nice thing about My School Dance is you can use us for any events and trips as well. I wanted to make sure to give some helpful tips to my teacher friends out there so they don’t have to deal with any planning struggles!

• Plan in Advance– This is my #1 rule when it comes to planning anything. It may sound crazy, but if I was a teacher I would lay out all of the trips the class is going to go on and then begin planning each one at least 3-5 months in advance. You do this because you don’t know if that trip will get booked up and there’s plenty of other details you’ll need to get figured out that is covered in the My School Dance checklist!
• Prepare the Parents– You want to make sure you give the students enough time to get their permission slips signed and approved by their parents. Parents can be very cautious and strict when sending their students somewhere other than school. Host a meeting with the parents to include them in on all of the details and answer any of their concerns. You can use My School Dance to send any permission slips through email and receive them back via email as well. This is great so the students don’t accidentally misplace the permission slips.
• Plan Group Activities– One of the main reasons to go on a school trip is to get the students out of the classroom and work together in a new environment. Try to choose a field trip that is specifically made for group activities and separate students randomly into groups. This allows students who might not always communicate to interact in a fun setting.
• Research– If you’re considering a trip you or another teacher you know hasn’t been on before, make sure to do your research. A lot of schools are cutting down field trips, so you want to make sure the ones you choose will be worth it for the students.
• Free Time– Make sure when creating your field trip schedule, you leave some free time for the students to interact with one another and have some fun. It’s exciting for them to get out of the classroom, plus interacting with one another is important for students to do.

Like I mentioned above, My School Dance does not just cover dances. We’ve had schools use us for class Disney trips and for school plays. My School Dance is a great way to stay organized and plan properly without all of the added stress. You can sign your school up today and start planning your events and trips with My School Dance!

Be sure to stay tuned for my next few blogs. I will include some fun, festive activities in December for your school!

Contact:

Stephanie Hamilton

833-336-8656

November 23rd, 2018

Hi everyone! If you don’t know me already, my name is Stephanie Hamilton and I am the Media & Marketing Specialist with My School Dance. Extra-curricular activities are a must for any school. Not only are they great ways to get more involved, but you also make some life-long friends out of it. They allow students to have real face-to-face interaction rather than just texting on their phones.

Extra-curricular activities can be anything from a sport to a school dance. These type of activities were always my favorite part about school. It’s where kids create the most memories and have fun. Plus, having a teacher who is passionate about the activity makes it even better. The kids look up to the teacher and can come to them as a mentor. Since extra-curricular activities are so important, I wanted to give the teachers some inside tips for running any type of activity.

• Get Everyone Involved–The more people involved, the more significant of an event it becomes. Get more students, teachers, and faculty to join in on the fun. It creates a better culture within your organization/club and allows more people to connect with one another.
• School Culture–Having a competitive culture, helps to promote a healthy competitive environment with a sense of direction for the activity.
• Get Teachers to Run Activities they Love–If a certain teacher used to be in Debate club and loved it, let them be in charge of it. If a faculty member used to be in charge of planning dances, let them be in charge of the school Prom. It’s always more fun to have the person in charge enjoy the specific activity.

Extra-curricular activities allow kids opportunities that they may not always have access to. My School Dance wants kid to interact more with face-to-face interaction rather than over screens, which is what we tend to see a lot today. That’s why My School Dance was created. We wanted to make the dance planning and management process easier for teachers/faculty. This way more activities such as a dance or an event can happen for students. If your school needs help with the management process for any type of event, My School Dance is here to help!

Sign your school up today and start planning your next event with My School Dance!

Contact:

Stephanie Hamilton

833-336-8656

Planning a Winter Dance

Planning any type of dance isn’t easy at all. Here are some areas that need to be done while planning a winter dance.

Planning Committee

Winter Dances are different at every school, so however your school does it you want to make sure you have some group of people that are committed to making the dance happen. For example, you can have a select group of teachers that volunteer their time to plan the dance, a group of students such as the Student Council which is great because then you’re getting the student’s voices heard, or a mixture of both faculty and students. It’s great to have multiple voices in the group so you can get different opinions and ideas.

Secure The Big Stuff

This is going to be the most important part to planning your school’s dance. You’ll need to sit down with your committee and figure out the perfect date for your dance. Make sure it’s not on the night of a big game or a school play. Plan this out early on in the school year so you have more options rather than last minute. The next thing to do would be figuring out your venue. Where would be the best place to host this dance? Some schools have it at their school in the cafeteria or gym. Some schools even host it at a venue location that’s close by. You don’t want the venue to be too far because it might be too hard for students to get there. My School Dance has a lot of pre-planning checklists once your school is signed up. These are great ways to lay out the different venues you might be considering.

Theme

The theme sets the whole mood. For a Winter Formal dance, many schools are known to do a Winter theme, but you don’t have to stick to that. Check out My School Dance’s Pinterest page! We have so many different theme ideas that are possible to do on any budget.

Food

A lot of Formal dances have some type of food for the students at the dance. Whatever you plan on doing, come up with a few different food options and make sure it works with your budget. No need to stress about the food, it’s not that big of a deal. 

Entertainment

This is another critical part to having a school dance. If you have good music, students are more than likely going to come back to the next dance. Another thing to think about is having a photographer or photo booth. There are so many companies that have fun pop-up photo booths that aren’t too expensive. Have your group do research to find local artists, DJ’s, photographers, and photo booth companies with their prices and go through it during a meeting. 

Publicity

Promoting your school’s dance is extremely important! You need to make sure you do it correctly so you convince more students that they WANT to attend. A lot of schools just hang up flyers that were made on Word, but you have to do more than that. Check out our Marketing a Dance blog post to learn more about this. We also allow you to share and promote your dance or event all over social media. Social media is the perfect platform to promote any event.

The history behind Sadie Hawkins is that back in the 1930s, a father was worried that his daughter, Sadie Hawkins, wouldn’t find a suitable husband so he organized a Sadie Hawkins day so she could find one. The women in town would literally chase after the bachelors and whoever they caught was required to marry them. Women in town continued to do this year after year. Back in the day, Sadie Hawkins was supposed to be seen as a day for women to feel empowered and take initiative.

Obviously, times have changed and life isn’t like that anymore. Girls don’t need permission to ask guys to dances anymore. However, many schools still uphold that tradition and have at least one “Sadie Hawkins” type of dance. This means that the girls have to ask the guys to the dance rather than vice versa. A lot of high schools are known to make their “Winter Formal” dance similar to this. I know for my school, our Winter Formal dance was called Turnabout. It was the same idea as Sadie Hawkins just a different name. I do think it’s a fun idea to switch the roles around and to let the girls do the asking for the Winter dance. It’s fun to change things up every once in a while. Plus, it’s fun to come up with a creative dance proposal.

If your school is interested in having a Sadie Hawkins dance but doesn’t know where to begin, reach out to us at My School Dance. If your school already has a similar Winter Formal Dance, My School Dance can help plan and manage that too! We’re here to help make the process easier so your school can host more dances and events for the students.

Don’t let the tradition die. Start planning your school’s Sadie Hawkins dance now with My School Dance! 

November 2, 2018

Hi 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. Is it just me or did the month of October go by super fast? Now that we’re in the month of November, I’m starting to get the holiday feels and excitement that comes along with it.

November is the perfect month to show appreciation for everything that you are grateful for. Personally, I’m grateful for a lot of things, but mostly my friends and family. I know the month of November can be hectic for a lot of people since the holidays are quickly approaching, but let’s make it a point to reflect on what we’re grateful for. Therefore, I have come up with a few ideas to take back to your classroom:

• Wall of Gratitude–A simple, yet fun way to get students thinking about what they’re grateful for is to put a festive piece of paper over your classroom door and have every student write one to two things that they are grateful for. This is always a nice thing to have displayed in the classroom so every time they leave and enter the room they’ll be reminded of it.
• Gratitude Photo Challenge–For the two weeks before Thanksgiving, create a theme for each day such as “Find something that makes you happy” or “Find something that you’re thankful for in nature” and have your class come together to agree on one item for that theme. Then take a picture based on the theme of the day with the class included in it. This is a great exercise to get everyone involved and work together as a group.
• Thankful Tree–Have everyone in your classroom go outside, find a leaf, and write what they are most thankful for. Tie all the leaves around some branches with yarn and leave your thankful tree in the classroom for everyone to see.
• Plan a Gratitude Party–After spending time doing activities to show what the students are thankful for, invite the people that you showed gratitude towards in your school and the student’s parents to a celebration. This could be a dance or even a dinner. Teaching students about gratitude and doing daily practices about it can change their view of life.
• Classroom Gratitude Book–Create a gratitude book to send home with a different student each week. Ask each student’s family to add a page of pictures and descriptions of what they’re grateful for. At the end of the year, be sure to celebrate your completed classroom gratitude book!
• Gratitude Sticky Notes–Give each student one or more sticky notes to write something they’re grateful for about another person in the school community. Then have the students “deliver” the sticky notes by placing them where the person will see it, e.g., a locker, a phone, a cleaning cart.

It’s important to have the students discuss what they’re thankful for and why. A lot of these activities allow for students to work together, interact with one another, and reflect on everything they have. My School Dance wants to encourage teachers to have more activities and field trips to get the students to interact and learn both inside and outside of the classroom. If your school needs help planning and managing any activities or field trips where tickets are being sold, reach out to My School Dance. We’re more than happy to help make this process easier on the teachers!

Contact:

Stephanie Hamilton

833-336-8656