For the night to light up, stars had to reveal themselves. The Paso Robles High School (PRHS) Winter Semi-Formal was held at the Atascadero Pavillion on the Lake, designed to be a night of fun and memories for all students across campus. This event was organized by the PRHS Leadership program, and was uncertain to happen as sales for tickets were not gaining traction within the beginning of the event being announced.
Both Leadership directors Jennifer Bedrosian and Jennifer Martinez were ambitious to bring back the winter formal dance due to it not gaining enough traction the year prior. “We wanted to bring it back so that students can add more memories to their high school years,” Martinez said. Martinez values all of the student opportunities at this school, and alongside Bedrosian they both work together to push for even more opportunities for students’ high school memories.
Junior Luke Kleinman has participated in the leadership program for two years and was a part of the many hands that helped put this event together. One of Kleinman’s assignments for organizing this event was persuading students to attend the dance.
“I found the most effective way was just talking to people, one on one, just people I knew or even didn’t know very well. I just just chat with them and have lunch or something like that. And just kind of that one on one, personal ‘I want you to be there’ is kind of a big thing,” Kleinman said. Kleinman was successful as he and other leadership students were able to get over 100 ticket sales for this event to happen.
“I like Luke’s strategy a lot because I did the same thing and it helped. It’s a bit more than just announcing to the classroom, getting to know students on a more personal level helps,”
Junior Jackson Bedrosian said. Bedrosian also worked with Kleinman in order to get students to go, and he with other members of the leadership program were glad that they were able to get students to join this event.
The students that did attend the event also had a positive output, junior Braedan Putman had attended the formal and was glad that he went. “I definitely enjoyed the event, the music and people were nice, and it definitely was a lot better than what they had at homecoming,” Putman said.
With the success of keeping the winter semi-formal tradition alive at PRHS, leadership will be excited to have it happen again for the many years at PRHS to come, making sure high school memories won’t be forgotten.
