October 31st – Lunch Time
Event Participation:
I played a part in three sections for the Halloween Photobooth Event (Polaroid). My first role was in marketing, where Minseop, Sean, Jayden K, and I had to decide how to promote the photobooths so that students around the school would feel more inclined to participate. We ended up creating posters, Instagram posts, and Instagram reels, all leading up to the day of the event to maximize participation. An extra role that came by and that I was willing to take on was the general school announcement for all of Hallo-week. This announcement was pre-recorded a week prior and announced to the school the Wednesday before Hallo-week. The final role was Timmy the wolf on the day of, but this was a rather short and last-minute idea, and there was not much planning for it.
Curricular Competency:
The curricular competencies I focused on for this event were “Understand the importance of knowing your audience in terms of how others receive your message” and “Create diverse and interesting announcements, posters, and other media to get information to the student body or intended people”. These two fall under the title “Public Relations and Forms of Communication”.
- In Course Goals I mentioned I wanted to be more flexible and adapt better. The second point resonates with that, as I needed to understand different views and needs when brainstorming for different marketing/promotion tactics.
- Spoke on how it is a goal of mine to get out of my comfort zone. Understanding the importance of my audience was key during the day of the event when being Timmy (mascot) as some people wanted to say hi and some wanted to stray away.
- In my course goals for personal development, I said I would sharpen my ability and knowledge to think critically and assess situations from diverse perspectives. This relates to the second point of my core competency in this event. The diverse perspective was putting myself in the shoes of the student body and adjusting to their interests.
Before: When we got the Teams Channel all set up on 10/09, Sean K, Minseop, Jayden K and I all volunteered for the marketing/promotion role. Our roles were to complete two reels covering both photobooths and making posters. Making the posters on Canva was completed very fast as it was not a demanding task, but brainstorming for reels took time. Our group understood how important it is to make advertising “on trend” which falls under both the curricular competencies I am using. With the curricular competency of “knowing your audience” in mind, for one of the reels we did a recently trending idea called “subtle foreshadowing” as we knew it would gain a lot of laughter and positive attention. (Evidence on PTSS Instagram). As I was a part of Marketing/Promotion, we were exempt from the decoration meetings at lunch. Instead, we used that extra time we got to brainstorm ideas.
During: On the event day, I went to the foyer 10-15 minutes before lunch started. At that time, I saw that the photobooth groups already had many helping hands. So instead, Ms. Rioux asked me to grab the cash boxes from the office, and so I did that. I also pulled out the mascot suit with Ms. Rioux and got changed into it right before lunch started. Being in the mascot was really out of my comfort zone, but it touches on my first curricular competency point. To me, it mattered that the student body would enjoy the event, and so I pushed myself knowing that it would put a smile on a few people’s faces! With the “importance of knowing your audience” in mind, I really did not want to step out of the costume too early, but I had to consider myself and how hot and claustrophobic it was getting in the suit and foyer and decided to get out of the mascot suit once I felt like enough people have seen me and waved, etc.
After: After getting out of the mascot, I could not connect much to the curricular competencies as I was no longer assigned a role for the day other than the mascot. After the event, Arisa (our point person), posted a shared reflection sheet. On that sheet, I wrote a couple of points on what was good, what could be improved on, and ideas for next time. Although I was not able to see much during the event (being in the mascot), I thought it would be helpful to everyone to even add just a tiny bit of input.
Evidence:
The dates of these reels posted match with the competency of knowing our audience. One was posted on October 24th, roughly a week before the event date, and the other was posted on October 30th, a day before the event. With Mr. Lee’s help, we could align dates to post these reels to ensure maximum popularity for the photobooth.
When preparing for the school announcement (in the office), I prepared in advance and sent my script to Morgan, which was checked with Ms. Rioux. I practiced multiple times, making sure that everything made sense, was audible, and brought attention towards all of Hallo-week.
Being in the mascot taught me a lot of lessons. There is a picture below of me interacting with people and again, knowing my audience. I was pretty overwhelmed while in the suit, but I wanted to make sure that the message I was getting across to the student body was full of joy and excitement for the day. It is a shame I could not stay in the suit for long, but I am glad that a lot of people enjoyed taking pictures, or waving to me!
