Dress-up days have always been a signature tradition when it comes to celebrating school spirit. I believe they are essential to creating a fun environment for students during festive times of the year. Benilde-St. Margaret’s has dress-up days for various weeks during the school year, such as homecoming week, holiday spirit week, and Catholic Schools Week. The dress-up themes have seemed to be either a hit or miss amongst the community in past years, but after BSM’s recent homecoming week, dress-up days have become more popular. Students should participate in dress-up days in order to increase school spirit and create a more enjoyable environment.
I am a dancer on the Knightettes dance team, and this year our team was required to participate in dress-up days in hopes of growing our school spirit. Last year, I felt our school spirit was low, as I didn’t recall a lot of dress-up participation. But this year, I felt the students, especially the senior class, were excited to dress up and celebrate our school spirit. I made sure to participate in all the dress-up themes this year and I encouraged my friends to dress up too. I think the dress-up days make classes more fun and get the school excited, creating a good environment for festive events.
Spirit tickets were also incorporated into dress-up themes this year as a way to motivate more students to participate. Student council members and teachers handed out spirit tickets to students with great school spirit and participated in the dress-up themes. If you received one, you put it inside a box in the main office. Then, there were raffles throughout the week where a random student’s name was drawn from the spirit ticket box; they would then receive a prize. Spirit tickets are beneficial and encourage students to show off more school spirit by giving students the opportunity to be rewarded for their efforts.
This year the student council chose fun themes that were straightforward, making it easy for students to participate. An example of this was groutfit, as many students own grey attire. Along with this, spirit tickets also encouraged students to dress up. Overall, I believe students should participate in dress-up days because they create a more upbeat environment and are great opportunities for students to have fun during the school year. I would highly encourage students to dress up for spirit weeks to make them more enjoyable; you may even receive a spirit ticket!