Month: August 2019

August 30, 2019

One of the biggest struggles that a lot of schools have is making sure enough students attend their school dances! Why host a big event if no-one is going to attend? We’ve noticed this is common with a lot of our schools, but there’s always a solution to this! My School Dance came up with a few different ways your school can increase student attendance at Homecoming!

Promoting

• Everyone assumes that promoting is super easy and they can just do it the week before the dance, but that isn’t the case. Advertising for a dance should happen the very first week you begin planning for it and should continue until the time of the dance. Since we live in the Digital Age, social media is HUGE for promoting dances. Almost all schools have at least one social media site. Why not continuously post about the dance on there? If your school has an electronic message board, create a message on there. Have students help out and create flyers, posters, and banners that are displayed all around the school and maybe even around the town. The more publicity the better!

Interactive

• It’s important to make the event somewhat interactive and fun! You want to have something that will engage the student’s attention and want them to want to attend. Even having something like some games, pep rallies, contests, karaoke, etc. Any activity that is going to allow the students to make it seem like they are involved and are a part of the event, will encourage them to continue to participate.

Feedback

• To continue to get more student’s input when it comes to big events like Homecoming, you’ll want to get some feedback. Surveys are a great way to get feedback and they’re super easy to gather! You can send surveys through email or have ones that students fill out on the spot. Email surveys usually have better results. Have students fill out surveys during an event or at a place where they will have to fill it out, such as student orientation. Another easy way to gather some feedback is to host student focus groups to get opinions from them. Even after the event, try to have some sort of way to gather feedback so you can make changes for next time!

Reminders

• Try to have some sort of reminder for students each week to encourage them to buy tickets for Homecoming. This could be done through emails, intercom announcements, or even having students or faculty speak in each class for a minute or two about the event. Students are so busy nowadays that even just a 1 minute reminder will make them remember to purchase tickets for Homecoming. You can even send a quick email to the students basically promoting them on why they should attend.

Food

• Who doesn’t love free food at events? I don’t know if it’s just me, but I have definitely attended an event just because there was food there! Teenagers love going anywhere where they have food, so why not work with that? I’m not saying have a full 5-course meal for each student, but provide something. One thing I always see as super effective is having appetizers. This way students can just come by the table and grab a few finger-foods instead of having an entire meal.

Ensuring that you do all 5 of these things are crucial to increasing your student attendance. Put yourself in the student’s shoes and think about what would make you want to go to an event. Even better? Have a student group, like a Homecoming committee, come up with ways to get student’s involved more!

With using My School Dance’s platform, you’ll be able to do all of these tips in even easier ways. Check out our free platform now or schedule a 10 minute demo to get more info! As always, feel free to read more of our blog posts for other tips that can help you: 10 Hottest Homecoming Themes for 2019, 8 Reasons Why You Should Attend Your School’s Homecoming, and Homecoming Is About Community!

Follow our social media channels too: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Contact:

Stephanie Hamilton

833-336-8656

August 23, 2019

Summer is over and it’s back-to-school time! After enjoying some time off, it’s time to get ready for the next school year. Planning for an entire year can be extremely stressful for a lot of teachers. However, My School Dance has a few easy things you can do to make the process easier and less stressful. A lot of this falls back to planning ahead and making sure you stay on schedule!

Save Some Stress By Planning Ahead

There are a lot of things going on in most of your lives that can affect your stress levels. Try to focus solely on your school year when planning your schedule. Figure out what you want to do in class everyday and create a general schedule with ideas, lesson plans, and activities. Once you have a general schedule in mind, you can create a more detailed one too.

Support System

Having a support system in place is a great way to help you become successful in everything that you do. Your support system could consist of fellow teachers, co-workers, family, friends, and even inspirational leaders. You can go to these people for advice and even to vent about an issue or something positive that happened. These people will help remind you why you do what you do.

Get Into A Routine

Getting back into a set schedule will help alleviate a lot of stress! Create a weekly schedule for yourself and follow it. You’ll start to notice that you have better time management and control of your day. You can also create a weekly priorities list so you know exactly what needs to get accomplished for each week.

Don’t Procrastinate

You need to be able to diligently manage your classwork, your own life, and other activities that are going on. Don’t wait til last minute to plan for something. You never know what might randomly come up in your life and you don’t want to be slacking to get something done right before class. It’s always a good idea to stay ahead of the game so this doesn’t happen.

Overall, help yourself out when it comes to stressful situations. You can prevent a lot of stress from happening if you just follow these tips! My School Dance is all about helping our teachers out and creating less stressful situations. If you’re in charge of managing your school’s next event or dance, try out our platform to prevent stress! It’s free for all schools to use too!

If you liked reading this blog post, be sure to read these ones too: 3 Keys to Effective Classroom Management, 4 Time-Saving Tips for Teachers, and How to Create a Positive Classroom Environment.

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Contact:

Stephanie Hamilton

833-336-8656

August 16, 2019

One of the biggest fears that a lot of teachers have is not being able to have control in the classroom with a group full of students. It’s honestly a very hard thing to do because you have so many different personalities mingling with one another. My School Dance truly believes that the key to effective classroom management is by having meaningful relationships with your students. Now I’m not saying you need to have hour long conversations with every single student because that wouldn’t be possible. Just make sure to make connections with each student and show them that everything they’re doing is worthwhile.

Positivity

By starting on a positive note, students will feel a sense of belonging and trust. The more comfortable they feel, the more they will be willing to work in the classroom and be productive. Some good ways to interact with students is to schedule one-on-one meetings with them every few weeks to check up on them and see if there’s any issues or concerns, have positive greetings whenever you approach them, and encourage group activities to get them more involved with others.

Relationship Building

In order to continue gaining student’s trust, you need to continue building your relationship with them. Frequently check up with them to see how they’re doing, give them feedback whether it’s positive or negative to show you’re trying to help them, and acknowledge them when they do something good to show you noticed it. Students are going to feel like they are able to come to you with anything if you have a connection with them.

Addressing Issues

If a negative issue arises, it’s pertinent that teachers don’t blow off the issue, but address it with the student. Even though you have good relationships with your students, you need to continue to show them that you are in charge in the classroom. A big one in this area is to work with the student when something goes wrong and ask yourself, “What could I have done to avoid this issue?” Focus on finding solutions for problems, rather than focusing on the problem the entire time. Students will feel like you are there to help them, rather than being there to constantly blame them and not change it in anyway.

Overall, having effective classroom management comes down to building relationships, maintaining those relationships, and working through the random cracks that arise in the relationship. Students want to know that their teachers are there for them and genuinely care for them. By having these relationships, students will have more respect in the classroom, which allows you to stay in control.

If you liked reading this blog post, check out some of our other helpful teacher tips: How To Create A Positive Classroom Community, Top 5 Ways To Get Students Engaged In The Classroom, or 4 Time-Saving Tips For Teachers!

Want more tips? Follow our social media channels too: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Contact:

Stephanie Hamilton

833-336-8656

Homecoming is one of the best events throughout your high school career! The Pep rallies, spirit week, school dance, football game, parade, and more is always exciting. It was like a week long party celebrating your home town! Now that it’s going to be approaching soon, you need to start planning for it! Are you on the Homecoming Committee at your school? Or maybe you’re the dance sponsor in charge of organizing this dance? Organizing a dance can be an exhausting task, but My School Dance is here to give some inspiring theme ideas for you! If you want to get the rest of the students involved, choose a few themes and have them vote for their favorite one!

GARDEN PARTY

Show off your school’s classy side with a sweet, yet simple Garden Party Homecoming. Get some fake flowers from the store so you don’t spend lots of money on real ones. You can also make a lot of DIY flower decorations for this theme. My School Dance’s Pinterest Page has a lot of floral decor ideas. Decorate the ceiling with lights, umbrellas, or dangling flowers. You can make the color scheme pastel colors too!

DISCO

Break out the disco ball, lights, and colorful decor for this theme! You don’t have to make the attire disco themed, but that would be fun too! Throw in some classic disco music to get everyone in the spirit. You can find a lot of unique decorations at local thrift stores so you don’t have to go over your budget!

AUTUMN/FALL

Embrace the season and create a fall themed dance. This will be easy because everything you need will already be in stores! Do a olive green, brown, and orange color scheme. If you want to be really creative, have students carve and decorate pumpkins as decorations for the dance. Serve apple cider and have bobbing for apples as an activity.

CANDYLAND

This may be overused, but who doesn’t love a good Candyland theme? Just imagine dancing around with dangling licorice, colorful lollipops, and chocolate fountains everywhere. Ask local candy stores to donate different types of candy for the dance so you can save on money!

MASQUERADE

Want to be mysterious and enjoy the night without having to know who is who? Make your theme Masquerade. You can choose a rich color scheme like royal blues, purples, and golds for this. You can even make it a black and white color scheme. Either have students decorate their own masks or have ones you can hand out to the students when they walk in.

JUNGLE

Create a safari themed Homecoming this year! You can ask your school’s art classes to create trees, vines, and other greenery as the main source of decorations. Have animal print decor such as leopard, cheetah, and zebra prints. You can find a lot of decorations for a Jungle themed Homecoming at your local party stores, Anderson’s, or even Etsy.

WIZARD OF OZ/EMERALD CITY

Create a yellow brick road leading up into the school dance. Have red slippers on display and a big DIY tornado as the centerpiece for the dance. You can create pictures of the characters in the movie and display them on the walls too. Create an Emerald City backdrop for students to take pictures or you know, selfies!

WESTERN

This is probably one of the easier themes to do on a low budget because a lot of the stuff can be DIY. You can find cheap cowboy/cowgirl hats from a dollar store that you can hand out to students. Create some hay barrels and a barn backdrop for photos! You can even slip in some country line dancing for the students to learn.

POSEIDON’S PARADISE

Instead of doing a typical Under the Sea themed, why not try something more creative? Use the God of Sea as your Homecoming’s theme. Make the color scheme different shades of blues and greens. You can create different sea horses, artifacts, an underwater ship background, and more.

ROCKABILLY

Almost everyone has heard of the movie Grease! If you haven’t, no worries! Students will still get the gist of the 1950’s rock n’ roll theme! Create a diner-like atmosphere with milkshakes served, 50’s music blaring, and poodle skirt servers. Bring a band in for this one and have them wear leather jackets to fit the theme!

It’s important to tie your Homecoming together with an awesome and unique theme! By having a committee in place, you’ll be able to accomplish all of these themes! Remember, think creatively and always plan enough time to figure out your decorations!

For some awesome ideas for decorations be sure to check out My School Dance’s Pinterest Page, Anderson’s, and Etsy! Once your committee chooses the theme, start managing your Homecoming with My School Dance for free! Might as well stay under the budget and still get help managing this event!

If you enjoyed reading this blog, check out some other tips from us for your Homecoming dance: Homecoming Is About Community, How To Choose The Best Themes For Homecoming, Don’t Run A School Dance Until You’ve Read These 5 Must Do’s!

Don’t forget to follow our social media accounts as well: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram!

August 2, 2019

As a startup company in Tampa Bay, we find ourselves being so caught up in the everyday business work. Sales, marketing, technology updates and customer service is how we spend our days. It is times like this that stop and remind us why we work so hard. 

Across the country, there have been eight school related shootings already this year. Last week STEM School Highlands Ranch shooting in Colorado which resulted in 7 injured and 1 fatality. This is a school we know was committed to school safety from personal interactions with leadership, which hit close to home. 

Our team is devastated by these terrible tragedies that are repeating themselves and as a result, children are scared, parents are terrified and teachers are feeling an immense sense of responsibility and constantly stressing “what if” scenarios.

Prevention, reaction, and protection are three areas that our system uses with schools. Our dismissal system provides an efficient and safe daily dismissal technology to the school. While Kid.io provides schools with an overall safety system.

Prevention: Often after these shootings, we learn there had been multiple warning signs. These students talking about shooting the school or acting in other ways of violence. Which a lot of times students don’t take too seriously, or do not know how to react due to the possibility of getting someone in trouble, being afraid of the student or not knowing who to talk to about it. Our Anonymous Tip Line offers a solely safe space for these types of behaviors to be reported without the stress of being identified. The entire purpose of this platform is to ensure that every “joke”, overheard conversation and suspicious activity can be safely reported and dealt with appropriately.

Reaction: Our system is a technology-based solution. Every teacher has a cellphone, which in this case is their tool. This is due to our Panic Button. Alert first responders even if the situation restricts verbal communication. The Panic Button offers an easily accessible way to report ANY emergency to the authorities immediately. Not only the appropriate authorities but fellow co-workers and parents as well. The Panic Button includes a silent alarm that alarms everyone with the app without the loud alarms and dangerous panic that can ensue. This includes multi-channel communication. When an emergency is reported, contacts will automatically receive text messages and phone calls.

Protection: Location services allow schools and emergency services to know the exact location where assistance is needed. In an emergency, time is everything. By our technology offering this service, it eliminates the time it takes for someone to call the authorities by being able to just use the app, and the authorities being immediately given location services to know exactly how to assist the emergency at hand. This also allows staff and students to avoid these areas and know where to go to have a safe space or evacuate safely.

We strive to provide safety solutions for schools. PikMyKid team consists of parents, educators and industry thought leaders who see and believe in this system wholeheartedly. We live in a generation where technology is at the forefront of everything we do. We should be leveraging technology to create appropriate safety solutions. PikMyKid and Kidio do precisely that- Leveraging the power of innovative technologies to provide cost-effective safety solutions to schools.

Guest Blogger:

Emily Markham

PikMyKid’s Marketing Director

Emily@Pikmykid.com

Want to Guest Blog for us?

Email stephanie@myschooldance.com!

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