There were a whole lot of fancy dresses and ties at Hugh Bish Elementary.
Not to mention fresh hair styles and freshly painted nails. And plenty of buzz about learning proper etiquette just in time for the parties.
Students were participating in Fancy Friends Day, Hugh Bish’s way of lavishing attention on students to make them feel special while teaching them some life skills. Call it thinking outside the box, said Principal Kourtney Colley.
“It gives them an opportunity to learn – and learn what not to do,” Colley said, adding the day was possible through volunteer efforts, from school staff, from parents and from the community at large (Impressions Academy of Beauty spent hours working on hair).
In the spirit of the day, many students came to school dressed to the nines: young ladies in fancy dresses and more than one young man wearing a tie and, in some cases, suits.
Teachers were encouraged to bring their own ideas to the classroom, which is how Kayla Cape’s third graders ended up in two-person teams, portraying interviewer and interviewee.
Cape made certain the students conformed to standards. When James Thompson and Kyle Wooley initially shook hands, she called them down because they were high-fiving. After her warning, the two young men shook hands formally, then settled down to a job interview.
Thompson worked from a list of pertinent questions, as any good interviewer would, first asking what job Wooley wanted.
“I want to be a teacher,” Wooley said, before he began answering questions specific to his job.
Occasionally the boys had to break character. When Wooley was citing his strong points and said he doesn’t get into arguments, Thompson couldn’t let that claim go unchallenged.
“Yes, you do!” he said.
Back in the common area, Colley had assumed the role of nail salon worker, carefully dabbing bright pink polish to the nails of second grader Emilia Brown, so her nails complemented her dress.
“For fun,” Brown said shyly, explaining why she wanted the nails.
Some of the formal wear and new highlights were evident among the fourth and fifth graders who were strutting their stuff in the gym. Although dances such as the waltz and two-step were planned, a mid-morning session saw students dancing to “YMCA,” before segueing into “Macarena” about 5 minutes later.
Fifth-grader Cooper Fletcher, neatly dressed and wearing a dress cowboy hat, didn’t have any trouble keeping up with “Macarena.”
“It’s not hard,” he said, admitting he had done the dance before.
Back in the common area, Kam Jackson rose from his chair and carefully brushed his hand over his newly-spiked hair, showing off his new look to classmates.
“I wanted to look fresh,” he said.
Fellow third-grader Andre Pettigrew nodded, saying he also was waiting for a hair appointment – where his long hair would be styled into a braid.
“I like it this way,” Pettigrew said of his long hair.
In Taylor Stott’s second-grade class, students like Owen Davis were waiting for the next activity. Davis, formally attired in a suit, wasn’t sure what his favorite part of the day had been, until he remembered what was coming.
“The party,” he said.
Stott said that the party was coming with rules: a list of manners intended to teach students how to behave in formal settings – and just at the dinner table in general.