Social Media Saves the Day

This year Weymouth High School began a new practice called "The Wildcat Way Period," Once a month we have an extended homeroom that last 55 minutes. The main purpose is to give the seniors, who work all year on an independent Capstone Project, time with their capstone advisors. It's been less clear what the other students will be doing for this extended period, but administration decided that within the first two months there would be grade level assemblies, with one class meeting in the auditorium, and another in the gym.

The juniors were scheduled to have their class assembly the last Monday in October, and as junior class advisor, I have been working with the officers to develop their meeting presentation. Initially, administration told us that we would be showing a powerpoint or video, but then we were told we would be in the gymnasium with no A/V beside a microphone.

The class president pictured above had the daunting task of not only speaking before almost 500 classmates, but engaging them in the class mission to raise $40,000 toward graduation expenses the following year. Students are expected to pay dues, purchase a class t-shirt, and volunteer at several fundraising events held throughout the year. The class officers also wanted to promote class pride and school spirit, things that had been noticeably lacking during the previous week's spirit week activities that lead up to homecoming. For the fundraising activities and class events to be successful this year, many students will need to take part, come to planning meetings, and promote among their friends. The officers decided that a class twitter page would be the best way to share out information, but at the time of the meeting they only had a few dozen followers.

To sell the class on the twitter page, students were given a raffle ticket when they arrived at the assembly. After brief announcements by each of the 5 officers students were told about the class twitter. Students were also told that if during the assembly they got more followers than the seniors, who had 244, then there would be a raffle. Next students were told about the class t-shirt options. Four choices were posted to twitter, and students could vote using PollEverywhere. Once students realized the twitter had some valuable information, students started to follow. Perhaps about 90 or so joined. Then the class vice president came back out, reminded the students about the raffle, and showed them what they "were playing for." He pulled out a chair from under the bleachers that had three whipped cream pies on it. "If we get over 244 followers during this assembly, we will pull 3 raffle numbers and those students will get to toss a pie in the dean's face!" That got the students' attention, and more started following and tweeting out the address to follow on their accounts. When the follow number broke 200, the class officers decided to pull one number. A girl was chosen to toss the first pie. It was hilarious! The students had never seen anything like this before--and everyone was taking pictures and snapchatting. The officers announced that there would be 2 more students chosen, but only if the follow number surpassed 244, and now the students were all over it!

Kudos to @deanbalan for being a good sport at today's Junior class assembly 🐾

A video posted by @buellhistory on Oct 26, 2015 at 12:08pm PDT

The officers got their message across, the students had a memorable class assembly, Students got to voice their opinions about the class shirt, and this coupled with the fact that the junior class just had a bonding experience, will hopefully lead to robust shirt sales. The next day the officers held a meeting for those interested in being on the "junior committee" to help plan and execute events. Almost 20 students showed up, which compared to previous years is a very high number.

A class assembly in the gym could have been a recipe for disaster, but thanks to social media, and an administrator who didn't mind getting a little messy in the name of class spirit, it was a great success. Meanwhile in the auditorium, there was another class assembly, and many students were also using their phones, but not in an intentional productive way, but rather to just kill time until the hour had passed.