The SGA kids are responsible for planning each of the categories below. We split them up into committees to take care of all the details, and it is our job as co-sponsors to oversee everything and make sure it gets done. For each category I've listed the basic responsibilities of these committees and written a re-cap of how they went this week.
Spirit Week:-Establish rules for the decoration of hallways by each class and organization in the school
-Find teachers to judge the hallways (we give $300 to the group with the best hallway, $200 to 2nd place, and $100 to third)
-Coordinate spirit days and get them approved by the administration
-Publicize spirit days
-Find teachers to judge the spirit day outfits each lunch period (we give $20 to the best outfit each day)
Here is a picture of me and Erin on Twin Day. Spirit Week at Northern is my favorite week of the year because EVERYONE gets involved. I can remember it being fun at West Linn, but our kids go crazy. They spend weeks figuring out what their costumes will be. Monday was Lazy Day (pajamas), Tuesday was Superhero Day (I was Wonder Woman), Wednesday was Twin Day, Thursday was Blast From the Past Day (I was the 60s), and Friday was Spirit Day. The kids stay up all night Thursday finishing up their outfits for Spirit Day and if you're not wearing red, white, and blue, you are harshly ridiculed. I love it.
Pep Rally:
-Coordinate pep rally games and choose contestants from all 4 grades and the faculty
-Choose 2 MCs from the senior class to host the event
-Sell tickets for $1 at lunch during spirit week
-Write the script and minute by minute itinerary of what will happen in the pep rally
-Work with athletic director to ensure all fall athletes will be introduced
Last year our pep rally was cancelled because the seniors vandalized the football field the night before. This year we didn't have any vandalizism (possibly because we installed security cameras), but we had to contest with the weather. Our gym doesn't hold all the students, so we have to have the pep rally in the football stadium. It was supposed to rain, but the rain held off until the last 5 minutes of the rally. The kids did a great job and everything was perfect. I was completely deprived of sleep and kind of brain dead at this point from all the work we'd been doing, but hearing them all scream at the top of their lungs when their graduation year was announced reminded me why I wanted to teach high school in the first place. The Homecoming pep rally is a huge deal because it's the only one the kids have all year (I guess because of the gym problem). I was really glad we got to have it and that it went so well.
Elections:
-Determine dates for nominations and final elections
-Distribute ballots to the English teachers and collect them (twice: nominations and final)
-Count all the nominations by hand
-Count the final ballots via Scantron machine
-Order one set of sashes to be worn by the nominees during spirit week, the corsages to be worn at halftime of the football game, and the sashes, tiaras, crowns, and flowers to be given to the winners at halftime
Because I am an English teacher and we do the elections in our classrooms (everyone takes English), Elections kind of falls entirely on my plate. The English teachers like to bitch and moan about giving up 15 minutes of their class time to let the kids vote, and it really annoys me that they can't see how important it is to the kids. However, this year I coordinated a new system that seemed to make it easier on everyone and they were pleased with how it went.
Parade:
(We should probably change the name of this committee to "Halftime Show" because now that we can't have floats driving on the track, it's not really a parade)
-Contact the Cheerleaders, Band, Poms, and ROTC to determine their participation in the halftime show
-Write the script to be read by the announcer
-With the assistance of the Elections committee, hold a rehearsal for the halftime show with the members of the Homecoming Court
-Contact the Homecoming King and Queen from both the previous year and 10 years prior to assist in crowning the winners this year
-Oversee the halftime show to ensure that everything goes as planned
This was my first halftime show since I wasn't at the game last year. First the marching band performed, then the poms and cheerleaders. Then the ROTC kids do some kind of drill prior to forming an arch with their swords for the court to walk through. This year, instead of having the kids walk out onto the muddy field as they've done in the past, we had the nominees stand on the track in front of the stands. It worked out really well because that way their parents and friends could see them and take pictures. It was raining fairly hard during the football game, but everything went almost as planned. We all lined up on the track and found out that ROTC was nowhere to be found, so we had to frantically locate them and get them lined up. However, to everyone else, I'm sure it seemed like it went perfectly. The King and Queen the kids chose are both active members of SGA and great kids, so it was a lot of fun for me to see them win. I knew the results ahead of time, so I was watching their faces. Both of them were so shocked and excited that I couldn't help but be thrilled for them..
Dance Details:
-Contact rental companies for tables, chairs, and punch fountains
-Coordinate a list of teacher and parent volunteers
-Design the tickets
-Determine dates of ticket sales and publicize them
-Order food and beverages and their delivery
Dance Decorations:
-Choose a theme and order appropriate decorations from the catalogs
-Organize a schedule of decoration sessions in the 3 weeks prior to the dance
-Oversee the decorating sessions to ensure things are assembled properly
-Keep track of how many hours each member spends at decorating sessions (each member who spends 18 hours helping earns a free homecoming ticket)
I have never seen a school that decorates for a Homecoming dance the way we do. It is unreal, and I don't think anyone outside of SGA has any idea how much time we spend on it. Below are pictures of our gym after the decorating was finished and before we started.
To execute this look, we first suspend the tent-like ceiling (made of strips of gossamer) from the rafters of the gym in the center. Then we have to run wires about eight feet high around the perimeter of the basketball court, to which the edges of the gossamer ceiling are stapled. To everyone who doesnt know how it's made, it looks like it is floating. Then we run wires around the walls and hang the black tarps. The floor is 4 pieces of tarp, and we have to lay them down, stomp across them in every direction, and duck tape them to the floor. These things alone takes an entire day (approximately 12 hours of work). Then we start moving in the decorations we've been working on after school for 2 and a half weeks prior. We order most of these from catalogs and despite how huge they look in these pictures, they all come in tiny flat boxes. There is a TON of assembly required. These decorating sessions drive me absolutely crazy because evidently I am a) extremely crafty, and b) extremely good at ascertaining what directions mean. The kids have so much trouble figuring out what they are supposed to do that it takes what feels like FOREVER to do everything. Inevitably, something gets messed up and my co-sponsor I end up having to fix it somehow. The kids try really hard, and they put in a ton of hours, and things always end up looking great. However, it really stresses me out that other people struggle so much with what seem (to me) like simple tasks. We have to decorate the large gym where they dance (the place we have the tarp, ceiling, and walls) and the small gym where they can sit down to eat and drink punch. This means we spend about $5000 on decorations each year and put in countless man hours assembling them. This year's theme was "A Night on the Nile," which turned out to be kind of hard to put together, but the decorations looked cool even if they weren't all particularly Egyptian.
I guess the black thing is some kind of Egyptian Castle? I didn't know there was such a thing. The fountain in the middle, however, actually spouted real water that we lit up, which the kids loved. The bluish purple thing is some other kind of castle. You can also make out the pyramid centerpieces on the tables, which I thought were a nice touch.
This thing below with the white posts looks more Arabian to me than Egyptain, but oh well. Then we have our pyramid, our waterfall and river , and some kind of egyptain looking arch that is kind of hard to see in the picture. I don't know if the Nile has any actual waterfalls, but this one looked pretty cool because we had a blue flood light under that white gossamer. When the lights were out, it was glowing blue. That arch thing fell down about 20 minutes into the dance, so it became a refuge for all of the shoes, cell phones, and digital cameras.
Above is a picture of me with two of my favorite kids, Wyatt and Brittany. Together we spent an entire day creating this Sphinx. First we had several pieces of black cardboard that had to be taped together. Then we had to glue gold cardboard over the top of it. Then we had to cover the gold with spray adhesive and attach two layers of black gossamer. Then we had to tape huge roles of white paper to the wall (as big as the sphinx), and I had to use an overhead projector to make the image big enough on the wall so I could trace it onto the paper. Once I finished that, we had to tape the white paper on top of the black cardboard/gold cardboard/black gossamer. Then we had to use exacto knives to carve out the lines I had traced and peel away the black gossamer to reveal the gold cardboard beneath. As you can see, there were a lot of lines. Who ever designed this stupid thing? The kids insisted on taking a picture with me in front of it after we finished it at about 10:30 on Friday night (this explains why Brittany is wearing her Homecoming Queen tiara and cheerleading sweatsuit). Although it was a huge pain, it turned out looking great and the two of them told me that everyone was talking about how it was the best decoration. Plus, these two kids are a lot of fun and (like the pep rally) reminded me why I like high school kids. This year my freshmen are driving me out of my mind, so spending all this time with the older kids has reassured me that I've chosen the right career.
Below are the decorations in the small gym (refreshment area). Whatever this purple thing thing is was definitely our best set of decorations. It certainly looked the most Egyptian and the kids loved it. Originally the kids just had these columns lined up against the wall, but after I suggested adding twinkle lights, the stars on the wall, and the gossamer draped from the tops of them, they turned out looking pretty cool.
To get to the point at which these pictures were taken, we spent 2.5 weeks holding decorating sessions after school. On Wednesday afternoon, we got into the gym and stayed until 10. Then we were in there all day Thursday until 10 and all day Friday until 10:30 (excepting the pep rally and football game). We were there from 8-2 on Saturday, at which point we finally finished up and let the kids go home to get ready for the dance.
The dance itself was great. It was definitely one of those things where the kids have no idea how much is going on because they are in their own little world on the dance floor. It was quite an eventful night for the two of us as sponsors because each of the following things happened. One kid from a nearby high school was arrested. He and his friend tried to get in without tickets and were turned away, and then Sgt. Titus (our police liason who attends all dances) was notified by our parent chaperones that someone was tampering with the back door. He discovered these same two kids trying to break in and noticed that one of them was drunk, so he was handcuffed and taken away. Somebody started a rumor that there was ecstasy in one of the punch bowls, so we had to set that one aside and alert Sgt. Titus. We had a kid who picked his nose until it bled (this is what a student sitting nearby told me) and he bled all over the floor before someone came and told us. We also nearly burned the place down. I started smelling something burning, so I grabbed one of the police officers and we discovered that a girl had set her sweater down on top of a flood light. Good idea! There were no flames (thankfully) but it had burned a smoldering hole in her sweater. It was a pretty nasty smell.
Despite all of these things, the dance was a huge success. One thing I've noticed since I began my chaperoning career at Northern is that the kids start leaving about halfway through the dance, and by the end, almost no one is left. Last night almost everyone was there all the way to the end, so I took that to mean they were having a great time. I loved it because the kids had worked so hard pulling it all together, and then they got to see all their friends and classmates enjoying it all. It is always fun to see my students all dressed up and excited to introduce me to their dates and all of that. Although I was quite loopy by the time I actually got to the dance, I really felt like all of the hard work had been worth it. It seems like such a big time committment to make for just one night, but I realized that if I have to put in 70 hours for 1000 kids to have 4 hours of great fun, I will keep doing it. We sell the tickets for $20, so that means we make $20,000 and about $13,000 after paying for decorations and food and all of the spirit week prizes. Now we get to do the next fun thing, which is figuring out what we're going to do to give that money back to the school. Last year we purchased a covered bus stop for the kids to sit in when they're waiting for their rides to pick them up after practice and games and stuff. This year I think we might buy a new sound system for the football stadium.
I got home around midnight last night and had to be back at school at 9am to clean it all up so P.E. can be held in the gym tomorrow morning. We were all there until about 2 today getting everything put together. Overall, I love the experience because the kids are great and I have a lot of fun with my co-sponsor (even if she is a little out of her mind). However, I am sure glad I have a whole nother year before we have to go through it again!!! Our principal has been commenting all month about how organized we have things and how this Homecoming is going more smoothly than anything in the past. If all this work doesn't buy me the right to stop teaching freshmen next year, he and I are going to have a serious talk! : )
