In Brief
Vol. 4, No. 5 May 2011
A publication for members of the Alliance for Student Activities
Developing a Theme for the Year w By Deby Lewis As you wrap up this school year and head off into the summer break, it’s not too early to begin laying the groundwork for next year. One idea that can help give focus to your school’s activities is to develop a theme for the year.
n Rational. A school-wide theme for the year provides every group in the school community a common goal, mission, and focus. This common focus brings the administration, faculty and staff, student body, parents, and community a common cause and a tool to unite their efforts.
• SUPER: Students Understanding Pride Enthusiasm & Responsibility), • Constructing the Future: Building the future one brick at a time, • Think Forward: Don’t gamble with your future—play your cards right, • United We Stand—Divided We Fall • Recognizing Excellence: Often Imitated—Never Duplicated • Team: Together Everyone Accomplishes More
This theme idea is among the most powerful
(It is best to do the political work before this kind of a meeting to ensure you have covered all the bases before this big meeting.)
n Graphic appeal. To ensure even more student involvement and ownership, the student body officers find a student artist to design the theme T-shirt. Some schools run contests for the design. Other schools let each class design a spin-off of the theme for their class shirts. People tend to work harder making good things happen when they know they have ownership.
n Marketing. Market the theme
n How do you pick the theme? In
uniting tools a school can
throughout the year with these ideas:
the spring, after the student body elections, the newly elected officers are charged with planning the next year. They are responsible for developing the theme, calendar of events, activities, and social and civic events that will make up that year and support that theme. They should begin the process by taking an end of year survey of the school community. The input from their peers, families, faculty, and staff will be invaluable for establishing a direction and the theme. When they have digested that information they begin to brainstorm short, powerful themes that everyone (administration, faculty, staff, parents, and community members) could use to unite school and improve their education.
use to help their student
Summer—before school begins: Create themed banners and posters to decorate the walls, entrances. and gathering areas for registration days. Display the theme on the class T-shirts and faculty/staff shirts sold at registration. Put the design on the school ID cards given to each student at registration and require every student to have an ID with them at all times. Put the theme on the student activities proposal book cover, student handbook cover, faculty and staff handbook cover, bell schedule, and the opening slide of every student activities PowerPoint as the year begins.
n Themes can be simple: • UBU — IBA __________(Mascot), • Sculpting Our Future
body develop the pride in school and self that is needed for a healthy academic environment. n Who picks and who approves the theme? Once the student body officers have selected the theme using the process above, they build a presentation for the administration to promote not only their theme but the activities and events they want to produce next year. The formality of this process helps them understand the importance of the theme and their hard work. Many schools use a meeting of all the stakeholders for this approval phase, administration, faculty, staff, club and class presidents, parent and family volunteers.
Fall: Give every teacher at least one bell schedule to put up in their room.
Some teachers will come by and ask the officers or student that did the design to come put the design in their room. Homecoming will have the theme for the year incorporated into the homecoming theme. Sometimes it IS the homecoming theme. Display the theme at every event or activity throughout the year.
room and on shirts, everyone sees it every day. The officers keep the theme visible in their big activities. There have been years at my school that the yearbook staff, junior class, senior class, and video tech classes have had the same theme for their activities (yearbook cover, prom, graduation, daily announcements).
Winter: Revisit the theme at the first pep assembly and every event held in the winter.
n Wrapping it up at the end of the
Spring: Use the theme as a foundation for the decorations for the end of the year banquets for all the stakeholder groups. Finally, retire the theme after the student government banquet where the question is answered, “did we accomplish our goals?”
n Sustaining it for the year. By posting the theme in every class-
is among the most powerful uniting tools a school can use to help their student body develop the pride in school and self that is needed for a healthy academic environment. Remember to keep themes simple and make them powerful. Help them come alive for everyone at the school.
year. The student government banquet at the end of the year was always the final activity for the theme. The banquet was also the installation for the incoming officers. Every year the officers talk about their theme and challenge the new officers to come up with the great NEW theme for the next year.
n It works! My years as an activi-
Deby Lewis (dlewis7450@sbcglobal.net) taught at the high school level in the El Paso, Texas for 36 years and served as student activities director at Eastwood High School. She has worked with a variety of student groups including student council, cheerleaders, National Honor Society class officers, and tennis team. Deby served as a board member of the Texas Association of Student Councils (TASC), has presented at TASC conferences, and was on staff at summer leadership workshops.
ties director at a large school have proven to me that this theme idea
Tip from the Pros Industry uses a process for creating their annual planning and themes. The idea is to focus the efforts of lots of different people doing different things on a common vision by writing that vision down and working it down into doable parts for everyone to see and live the collective accomplishment. Simply put, that process works to capture a vision/mission/goal/objective/activities, events/ listing. They begin with the question “what do we want said about what we did this year, next year when it is over?” From there they establish their written vision (broad and sweeping) followed by a written mission (more specific to give direction to the vision) and from the mission they break down parts to goals and then smaller parts of the goals called objectives, which get broken down even further into activities and events. Notice all these steps lead back to the vision and that vision is for the entire organization. After getting their goals, visions, mission and dreams on paper, it is easier to begin the creation of the actual theme and supporting activities. This may be too deep to begin with but if you are interested in perusing it, see The 5th Discipline by Dr. Peter Senge.
In Brief is published five times per year by the Alliance for Student Activities, a nonprofit corporation whose mission is to promote the value of cocurricular student activities and to provide professional development and support for advisers and future advisers. Board of Directors Mike Smith, President Lyn Fiscus, Vice President Ann Postlewaite, Secretary John Glimco, Treasurer © 2011 Alliance for Student Activities
Alliance for Student Activities www.alliance4studentactivities.org info@alliance4studentactivities.org