Hillery Park Middle School was decorated in "City Lights" Friday evening for a dance organized by After Class Productions, an endeavor of communications students in an Introduction to Business and Communications class.
This is the second year that the COM317 class has held a dance at Hillery Park Middle School in Buffalo. The dance served as an end-of-the-year reward for middle school students who maintained high grades and good behavior. Throughout the semester, the students visited the school and talked to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders to encourage their enthusiasm about the dance.
Students jammed to Top 40 hits, and there were many other activities to enjoy such as a graffiti wall, photo booth and raffles. Students also gathered around to watch a break dancing competition.
With only a $1,000 budget from Hillery Park, students had to fundraise the rest of the expenses themselves. They were assisted by local businesses, which contributed donations.
The premise of the project was to develop a non-profit business practice that could be used as hands-on experience for running a real business, according to Vanessa Jozwiak, head of Public Relations and Marketing for After Class Productions. The students were separated into different departments including public relations, finance, planning and logistics, recruitment, and creativity.
"We tried to structure the class so that is similar to that of an organization," Jozwiak said.
Some of the obstacles encountered in the planning of the dance were similar to those that a real business would also face.
"The hardest thing was compromising the class vision with the school vision," Jozwiak said. "We had to learn that we were working for somebody, and it wasn't just our own dance but Hillery Park's dance."
Although the past two months of planning had been extremely hectic, students thoroughly enjoyed the event as a finale to an interactive learning experience and opportunity to mingle with the younger students.
"I enjoyed the culmination of weeks of preparation and just to see the kids have a good time," said Armand Mahoutchian, a junior communication major.
"Many of them hadn't even thought about college," Jozwiak said. "We wanted to talk to the students about college... now, they get to see different aspects of college life."
Professor Mary Beth Debus, who first taught the class more than 20 years ago as a graduate student was impressed by the effort from her class.
"I've never been disappointed. If you put the challenge out there, students really step up," Debus said. "I think this class has shown a lot of commitment and enthusiasm, and they went out to do better than last year."
This year's dance boasted a 95 percent attendance rate, with over eighty middle schoolers present from the three grades.
Hillery Park is a Buffalo Public School that is part of a positive behavioral initiative campaign, and was originally chosen as a school because of a connection between Debus and Maggie Hoeltke, site facilitator for "Closing the Gap" initiative at Hillery Park. The dance was strongly supported by the school administration, Hoeltke said.
"It gives students a vision as to what they can be and their potential," she said.
Hoeltke added that the dance was highly anticipated by the middle schoolers because it offered a rare opportunity for them to socialize with their friends outside of school hours.
The behavioral initiative was a success, according to students at Hillery Park.
"Basically, a lot of kids were like, we want to go to the dance, so they didn't get in much trouble," eighth-grader Emily Sanger said.
Eighth grader Cheyenne Burton also gave his approval - he said that students did a great job organizing the dance, and he hopes for more dances in the future.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
