Glacier View students raise funds for D.C. trip

MAT-SU — Washington, D.C., a wonderful place filled with museums and artifacts, is Glacier View High School’s ultimate learning experience and we are working hard to get there.

The high school class of Glacier View will travel with Close-Up, a school-based program that guides students from around the United States through our nation’s capital and teaches them the history and works behind our nation’s government. Glacier View High School students have been working countless hours in an effort to raise funds for each student’s trip to Washington, D.C. Fundraising for this once-in-a-lifetime experience has embedded lessons in business formality, how to manage money and finance and how to early plan.

Business formality is embedded into every aspect of fundraising. We have been striving to be more formal when inviting people to our fundraisers. One of our main objectives for fundraising involves different themed dinners. The students, so far, have done two successful dinners.

The first, which was all about Mexican food, revealed some blemishes to buff out. The second dinner, in which we served Italian food, was a much larger success for all who participated. Throughout both meals we worked on various aspects of what one might encounter as a food service worker. Everyone had to focus their efforts into being formal and professional for their jobs. In the future, Glacier View High students will be doing various fundraisers and broaden their familiarity with different work styles.

Students have also had to work on managing money and finance, which can be a difficult task for teens. Glacier View’s high school students are learning the fundamentals of handling money, earning money and how the effort you put in is returned monetarily. We are also learning how to budget money. Creating a budget, we have learned, involves setting a goal and working to raise money to reach that goal. The money we raise as a class all is given to the hard-working students who will, hopefully, lead us to Washington, D.C., expense free.

Early planning is a life skill everyone needs. Early planning involves inviting people to different fundraisers, planning and even cooking sometimes two or three days ahead. Planning ahead makes the fundraisers successful. We have been planning this trip, which we will take in April, for over a year and have been planning and raising funds to help fun out trip.

The students are learning skills that will make them successful for the work place after school all while raising money for a rewarding educational experience. Overall business formality, money management and the benefits of early planning are skills that we all need to be successful and what better way to learn them then working toward a rewarding goal; a trip with classmates.

Sheridan Pegg is a sophomore at Glacier View School.