Culture

Share the Love

Valentine’s Day marks a great opportunity to spread LOVE and TOGETHERNESS across your campus! We’ve heard so many great ideas in past years and wanted to share a few below for inspiration. Start planning now and collaborate with either an established club at your school or assemble a new team to create a memorable Valentine’s Day event!

Just think if EVERYONE at your school received something on Valentine’s Day… it would brighten their day and ensures they receive at least one thing. 

Personalized Hearts: cut out hearts for every student and staff member and then write their name and a brief message on the heart. Place hearts around campus the evening before Valentine’s Day. The hallways look great decorated and everyone enjoys finding their heart! 

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Treat Bags: fill small bags with sweet treats for departments that often get overlooked, such as transportation, cafeteria, or custodial. Ask a club to volunteer or organize a group of students to deliver the bags.

Live Music and Dessert: during lunch time, have select members of your marching band, jazz band, or a DJ play music and have a club volunteer to hand out treats to everyone.

Spirit Beads: give spirit beads to students and staff in the morning to wear all day. The spirit beads could be red/pink or school pride colors.

If your school has not yet planned for a Valentine’s Day activity, we hope these ideas inspire you to use this day as an opportunity to intentionally build culture and relationships among students and staff.

Share your Valentine’s Day event and photos on our School Culture By Design Facebook group!

#BetterTogether #SchoolCultureByDesign

Secret Santa

We organized a My Favorite Things Secret Santa gift exchange with our staff. Inspired by Oprah's annual Favorite Things list, each participating staff member purchased three identical (or similar) meaningful items spending no more than $25 to $30 for all three combined. At the event, everyone brought three gifts and put their own name into a bowl three times. Next, everyone draws three names (discarding their own back, if they choose it). Then the gift giving begins! One person starts by giving their three gifts to the people they drew, and once those gifts are opened, he/she explains the meaning of the gift.

- Kerri Malazdrewicz, Teacher and Council Advisor

My Favorite Things Secret Santa.png

Share your #BetterTogether story that uniquely engages staff or students:

https://rb.gy/54eecb

GRATITUDE COLLAGE

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At El Camino High School, each student took a moment to reflect on what they were thankful for... and then we designed a GRATITUDE COLLAGE for all to see! A few weeks before Thanksgiving we distributed the die-cuts to each teacher in a manila envelope with the directions taped to the outside of the envelope. The directions are simple: have each student and staff member write down something or someone they are thankful for.

- Derek Padilla, Director of Activities at El Camino HS, CA

Share your #BetterTogether story that uniquely engages staff or students: https://rb.gy/54eecb