Spirit week

The idea of Spirit Week is simple: have a chain of theme days, with various activities and prizes along with it. The first known Spirit Week was right before winter holidays 2012, although old documents give reason to believe that such events have taken place in the past...

Christmas 2012

 * "The spirit week was one of the biggest and most successful student organised events in KSYK history" 


 * -Vice principal




 * "This is dumb"


 * -Former council Chair

Sprit week 2012 was organised by the council of 12/14, and spanned the last four days of school before vacation. Participation was good, with hundreds of students dressing up. Each day, one best dressed student was rewarded, as well as one randomly selected student out of everyone participating.

Theme days
The themes for each day were selected in a meeting open to anyone wanting to contribute, by vote.


 * Pyjama day. A classic for theme days. Students came to school in pyjamas. Requires little effort, and resulted in good participation.
 * Sports day. The idea was to have an outfit that had something to do with sports. Gave room to a lot of variety and individuality, whilst allowing almost anyone to participate with minimal effort.
 * Toga day. Dress up in a toga, or otherwise Roman costume. Classic american theme. Required the most effort out of all four to participate at all, but yielded some very nice costumes.
 * Dress like it's summer day. The name says it all. Very easy to participate, and excellent for brightening a cold winter day. Had the best participation out of the four.

The themes were a good combination, but could have been better. The themes did not allow very much effort or individuality.

Tickets
Every day, during the second lesson, a group of students went around the school giving out tickets to everyone dressed up. The tickets were standard two part raffle tickets from Tiimari. Maybe 600 total? The tickets were used for the raffle on the last day.

Gala
Every day, students gathered to the central hall, where a team of judges (council members and staff), selected that day's best dressed student. All students wanting to participate came up onto the stage and formed a half circle. The four best were brought to the front, and the best was announced, as well as awarded with a 20 euro gift card to Stockmann. The galas were made galaier with interviews, and music, toward the end of the week.

On the last day, as well as choosing the best, a raffle was held amongst everyone that had participated. The winner was given a 80€ gift card. Strangely, it took 4 raffles to find a winner. The winner had a ticket from that day, and wasn't really wearing a costume.

Spirit Week 2013
Trying to turn the event into a tradition, spirit week was organised by the same council as the previous year, Christmas 2013. This time the themes were picked to allow effort, but still be relatively low effort. Most of the week was about the same, except for the addition of a prize for the best costume of the week, and photography. There were significantly less participants than the previous year.

Theme days
This year the themes were decided within a council meeting.

The themes of the previous year were easier to approach, and more self explanatory. These could have been explained and advertised more.
 * Swiggedy swag thift shop day. Riding in the success of successful song Thirft Shop, and the hilarity of the phrase 'swiggedy swag', this theme day tried to be cool, but also inspire a different kind of target audience as a regular theme day. This backfired, as only around 50 students dressed up. Perhaps the choosing the target audience as people who do not participate was not very smart. Very quality entries, though. One problem may have been that it wasn't really clarified at any point what swiggedy swag thift shop meant.
 * Pirates vs. Ninjas. This theme day was relatively easy to take part in, but allowed a lot of work to be put into outfits. The theme had a very different target audience than the previous day. Dressing up still required parting from the norm enough that there was perhaps too much of a threshold. About the same amount dressed up, lots of effort.
 * Traffic light day.  This one was unlike other themes. Basically every color was assigned a relationship status (green: free, red: stop), ranging from serious to fabulous, with a couple random combinations, like Santa Claus, thrown in. We ended up not giving out raffle tickets, because it was impossible not to participate. A moderate amount of the school dressed up according to the appropriate colors. Most of the outfits aiming to win the best costume of the day were dressed up as Santa, however, mildly missing the point. Perhaps the student base of Kulosaari is the wrong kind for a day like this. Especially when connected to Sprit Week. One student dressed up as a traffic light.
 * Multikulti day. The aim of this day was to show off different cultures in Kulosaari and celebrate all cultures. At the announcement of the theme, it was immediately speculated that the theme would result in racist outfits. Apart from the presidents, this was not the case, however, and most cultures represented were related to the students' respective one. Some concern was raised about a student dressed up as a Geisha. Fortunately it turned out to be a Chinese young woman dressed up in a traditional Chinese outfit. About the same amount dressed up as the first two theme days.

Tickets
Same deal as the previous year. Raffle tickets were given out in lessons during the second lesson of every day but Wednesday. A severe drop in distributed tickets, lower than 200.

Gala
Same as previous year, but with a more clear structure, and slightly different prizes.

The new format:

Judges sit in chairs in front of stage. Everyone is called onto stage, and as hosts entertain, judges pick out 5-7 of their favourites. They then have a moment to consider the top 3. Once that is announced, the crowd indicated it's favourite by yelling, and the judges give announce the winner, giving explanations for all three contestants.

The winner each day received a 20€ gift card, while the raffle winner and best costume of the week received 50€.

The top 2 for the best costume were both unique and turned the theme on it's feet. The winner being the student dressed up as a traffic light, and the runner up being two young men dressed up as modern day internet pirates.

Photography
Photos were taken at the Gala, to provide evidence and help in picking the best costume.

Future suggestions
A team photographing the outfits would be great, as there is little proof or pictures of XMAS12 spirit week.

Perhaps some sort of relevant activities?

More advertising.