Student success = InviteRight SchoolTools Scholarships

Bring on the scholarship applications

Think you have a student or students who could use $500 and have a good story to tell? Send them our way! We're looking for stories from every region of the country that explore student's personality, their school spirit and stories from students in every corner of the country.
These are real tales about students and the wonderful things they do to make the school community better for everyone. The scholarships and criteria are below. Please share the following link with your students: http://inviteright.com/scholarship2013
Here's the scholarships and how to qualify:

$500 Making Grad Great Scholarship

Goes to the student who best displays how they went the extra mile to make grad extra special at their school.

$500 Sweat Your Way to Grad Scholarship

For the student-athlete who is involved with sports and has displayed involvement with their school during their high school years

$500 Acting Out Grad Scholarship

For students who can display how they express themselves through music, acting or how they've enriched their school and community culture by working behind-the-scenes to ensure these events go on.
To be accepted, all submissions MUST be accompanied by the name of the grad co-ordinator, coach or athletic director, and drama or music teacher. Why?  We need to verify the application.
Watch our blogs to read some of the great student success stories that come our way from now until June.

Feature Focus: Simplify Fundraising

Parents and teachers sometimes dread hearing the F word: Fundraising. It usually means selling containers of cookie dough, bottle drives or teachers giving up their free time to plan an event that students themselves aren't overly enthused about.
Besides all the great ideas that students and teachers come up with each year to raise money for causes and their school, InviteRight is also there for collecting donations online and make your fundraising efforts as successful as possible.
There's a few ways we help in this regard. We will sum up here, but don't be shy about contacting us to ask questions. InviteRight can be set up to solely collect donations and you can fundraise by collecting more outstanding student fees.

Food for Thought: Family Classic Meatloaf

Cooking doesn't have to involve throwing a frozen cardboard box into the microwave and hitting the start button. If you want a hearty dinner that will please everyone, here's an easy recipie:
Prep Time:  10 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Total Time:  1 hour, 35 minutes
For instructions on how to prepare this mean meatloaf and other great recipies, go to kraftrecipes.com and click here for tips on how to cut calories while still enjoying meatloaf.

Blog Highlights

InviteRight SchoolTools: Do-It-Yourself or Do-It-Right?
Try as we might to teach Grad Coordinators how to DJ their own dances (see below), most everyone leaves the music to the professionals. But what about distributing and selling tickets? Let’s not forget that the graduation experience often starts right here. For more opinion on grad banquets and our recent Best Practices seminar, keep reading Eric's blog. Click 'Like' to share your thoughts on Facebook or if you like the blog click the 'tweet' button.

EventIQ: Easy Classroom Bully Exercise
A crumpled piece of lined paper is all you need for a great exercise with your students on bullying. Get their attention and get them engaged too! Read the blog and watch the video that explains how this exercise works. We welcome your ideas and thoughts on how you approach the issue of bullying with students.

Debate Club: Practical skills or arts in school

This is a feature where we take an important issue in schools today and examine the pros and cons of it. Voice your opinion on Facebook or tweet your comments to @inviteright and we'll share results and comments next month.

VOTE ON:

Should public high schools start to focus more on teaching practical skill sets, such as managing money and investing, versus subjects such as history and art?

PRO:
High school students are on the verge of entering the adult world. It is important that they know how to manage their resources, including managing their money and filling out tax forms.
Learning about art and history is important, but it is not going to help you be successful in life. So many young people are clueless about finances and if they started to learn it early, they would be much better off when they got older.
Students graduate every year with a basic understanding of art, music, etc. but then head to post-secondary education without the proper knowledge of how to effectively use credit cards or manage their money. They leave university or college debt-burdened, but without the concept of how to start paying their loans off while establishing their life.
Tweet your approval by clicking the tweet button below, using hashtag #proarts if you agree with the above.

CON:
Some people have aptitudes for different skills and appreciate them more than others. Classes should be available in art, choir, band and drama because it makes students more well-rounded individuals.
Children who cannot converse about history become uninformed and apathetic adult voters. You could argue that a family with even basic technology (a computer and monitor) can access all the knowledge they could handle via the Internet.
With all due respect to teachers who do their best to engage students and find innovative ways to teach the curriculum -- if schools are void of culture, what stops a student from abandoning the school system altogether?
Click the Like button if you think schools should focus more on teaching "practical" skills.