BSM students always look forward to school spirit weeks. Students are able to dress up, participate in all-school activities, and come together as a school community. However, students often underestimate how much behind the scenes work goes into planning a spirit week.

Spirit weeks are a big part of the BSM community. Throughout the week, students are able to partake in dress up days and participate in school activities, such as pepfests or boys volleyball gamesl. Sometimes at the end of the week there is a dance like Homecoming, Holiday Ball, or Prom. Other times, BSM has spirit weeks to celebrate events throughout the year like March Madness and Catholic Schools Week. Whatever the spirit week may be for, students tend to enjoy and look forward to them. “I really enjoy spirit weeks and I think student council does a great job planning them. I loved the new variety of our dress ups this year and my favorite was Adam Sandler day,” junior Ellery Clark said.

Assistant Principal of Activities and Student Life Cami Dahlstrom works closely with the student council in planning these weeks. “I help facilitate. Sometimes I will help make the forms that go out to all the students, but typically, I just present what the students come up with [to administration], and then the student council talks about them,” Dahlstrom said.

While Dahlstrom works closely with the students, the student council officers have the main planning jobs. Senior Jillian Petty is a part of the student council and helps plan spirit weeks. “It’s a lot of ideas that go into dress up days. We do a lot of research actually. A lot of us are scrolling on Instagram and Tiktok constantly to figure out ideas for dress up days,” Petty said.

Because there are so many activities planned for spirit weeks, the student council has to start planning well in advance. For homecoming, the student council officers had to come in for a few meetings before school even began to start planning the dress up days and events that would take place during the week. During these meetings, student council works on scheduling, time frame, and other logistics for the spirit weeks. “For the activities, it’s all logistical. So, how many people are coming? How do we fit our schedule around it? So all those things take a while to get into place. We usually try to tell teachers a month ahead of time if we’re going to change any bell schedule,” Dalhstrom said.

Student council wants to make these weeks and events memorable for everyone so they work hard to make them a success. “We usually plan a month in advance. For the huge events like prom, we’re starting with finances and stuff. So it starts a lot in advance and then as the dates get closer, we pick subcommittees to who will work on [specific parts of planning],” Petty said.

Currently, Dahlstrom and the student council are putting together the Holiday Ball spirit week. “We already sent out a form a couple weeks ago and asked for feedback. Student Council went over it… and then we have to get ideas approved by the administration,” Dahlstrom said.

Knowing that student’s opinions are very strong about dress up days, Petty and the rest of the student council really want to think about what people are going to participate in. “It’s really fun to see how people react towards what we picked. We always try to keep in mind when people aren’t gonna actually participate and what they’re actually gonna like,” Petty said.

Dahlstrom says that she enjoys working with the students to plan these weeks. While they take lots of planning and time, they bring fun into the everyday school environment. “I do enjoy it. I want to make sure we enrich student lives when you come to school. It should be an exciting place to go and co curriculars are a big part of learning. I just think that’s so important for you guys to have a good experience and for everyone to be included, so I really like it,” Dahlstrom said.

Student council had a lot of new ideas that they brought to the table this year. They plan on giving spirit weeks some major improvements. During homecoming week this year, student activities were during the day instead of at night and different dress up days were incorporated. “They wanted to make it different from last year. I think we had jersey day three different times last year, so we wanted to make sure that we’re doing something new and something that kids are excited about,” Dahlstrom said