Middle School Winter Dance, Disaster or Success?
Apologizes for the lack of photos, but privacy of dance attendees must be protected.
Students of the Grace School Camilla Garrison and Camila Belliard
By Camilla Garrison
Once elected, this year’s Student Council of the Grace School had work to do. At the first meeting, the students voted on an agenda comprised of what were the most important ideas. The very first order of business was the Winter Dance. The last Student Council had planned and executed the first Middle School Dance yet, and based on the student interest and ideas in the campaign speeches, it had to happen again.
Brainstorming and planning were the topics of the next few meetings, two with the Principal to go over funds and food. Students of the Council were divided into groups planning music, food, decorations and games, trying to prepare everything in advance. A music request survey was put out to all of middle school (grades five through eight) by means of Google Classroom and decorations were handled by the Cricut Club. Food was pretty much covered by higher administration after Student Council decided on what they wanted and games were procured by an occupational therapist. Things were seemingly going well until about the day before the dance.
The Principal had ordered the requested photo backdrop from Amazon, and one of the Presidents and Vice Presidents went to pick it up from the office along with the decorations left over from the previous year. Back in homeroom, they opened the box and found what looked like many pieces with complicated instructions and tools. Excused from ASL class, three eighth graders were prepared to tackle a difficult task, but when the pieces were laid out, something was wrong. The provided gloves were in fact for metal/paper cut protection, and the strange tool was for clicking plastic together. Six panels were all there was, and the backdrop came together much quicker (and smaller) than the students thought. The backdrop was barely big enough for one person, much less for a class photo! While in the Science classroom doing this huge project, the students also received the news that the Cricut club’s 1000 snowflakes came to about 50 snowflakes instead, there were no other decorations, and finally, the DJ had COVID. President Camilla Garrison declared the dance doomed.
Friday the 24th was the day of the dance. Arriving at school bearing about 120 feet of twinkly lights and zip ties, President Garrison and Treasurer Garrison were determined to pull this thing together. Students without transportation (or who just wanted to) would stay after school until the rest arrived at 4:00 pm when the dance officially began, but there was a lot to do before then. Thankfully, both the eighth grade homeroom teacher (Camilla’s class) and the Science teacher brought some extra decor supplies including tinsel curtains for the photo backdrop and gym walls as well as some crepe paper streamers.
Council members prepared during homeroom in the morning, prepared at indoor recess and prepared in between classes, but the gymnasium was still looking quite bare. A few schools live at Meeting Street, and all those kids require gym class and dismissal. Only brief periods of time was the gym available for decoration when classes took place during the school day, and parent pick up dismissals were staggered between the Grace and Hope Academy Schools. The last of the decoration time only had a duration of thirty minutes or so, right before four o’clock. After they were finished with school, students staying after got dressed up for the dance and did hair, nails and makeup in the fifth and seventh grade classrooms. At three thirty, the Hope Academy had cleared out, and the final preparations were made. Those included six tables and tablecloths, a few last-minute streamers, hanging of the lights and at least four students running up and down one of the longest ramps in the country in heels. Soon, it was four o’clock, the gym was filling and it was just about ready. President Garrison says “I was already exhausted by the time the dance actually began, but regained my energy soon after some food and soda.”
Even though it came together at the last minute, the second Grace Middle School Winter Dance turned out to be a success! It turns out this year’s student council can actually plan a good dance, but lets hope it goes smoother if they try for a spring one!