HAVING A BALL: DHS students host inaugural winter event

One of the most common ways to pick up a new skill is to learn by doing — to put the things you’ve learned so far and put them into practice.

For Deshler High School students in the events planning course, that meant having a ball. Quite literally.

DHS Career Tech Director Heather Mize said events planning students in Family and Consumer Sciences teacher Kelly-Grace Treadway’s class decided to put on the inaugural Winter Wonderland Ball at an event venue in downtown Tuscumbia on Dec. 5.

Mize said the students worked on every aspect of the event for three months, from fundraising and budgeting to hiring the DJ and decorating.

She said the students even managed to haggle with the University of North Alabama, the owner of the event space, for a better rental fee.

“Instead of planning a fictitious event, Kelly and her students had a few ideas, and they wanted to host a dance,” Mize said. “She suggested a winter ball where everyone could dress up, so they started fundraising.”

The events planning students used a machine donated by Larry Lewis of PROJECTXYZ to make and sell ornaments, and the IBEW in Sheffield donated $1,000 for the event.

The students used these funds to buy all the decorations, hire the DJ, rent the venue and purchase snacks.

Mize said one major reason the class decided to put together a real event was classmate Kayla Vickers, a special-needs student.

The class decided to invite all special-needs students from any school in the county to attend.

“After they made all the purchases for the event, they had enough left over to purchase Kayla’s dress,” Mize said. “She is precious and the life of the party. She helped plan everything with the class. They wanted to give every special-needs student in Colbert County a chance to attend, so they made invitations and Kelly hand delivered them to schools.”

Though only students from Deshler managed to attend this year’s event, Mize said the goal is to make it an annual ball and attract more guests in the future.

“Kelly did a phenomenal job, and the students couldn’t stop talking about the event the next day at school,” Mize said. “They had no idea how much work went into something like this, and I thought it was the best event we’ve hosted since I’ve been director of Career Tech here.

“My cheeks were hurting from smiling, seeing the smiles on their faces. We got to look through all the photos they took. This is a real-world taste of what they have been learning, and it gives them a sense of pride seeing something they planned and worked on come together.”

Mize said the event planning students will take what they learned from the inaugural event, both the errors and things they did well, and hopefully expand the ball in the future.

She said the idea is for it to become an annual Career Tech event with the events planning class leading the way, and hopefully students from other schools joining in.

“This is what I love about Career Tech,” Mize said. “We teach the students, and they go and apply that knowledge. I thought the students and teacher did a fantastic job.”