7 Ways to Celebrate National Decision Day with Your Students

It’s almost National College Decision Day, and as a school counselor, you’re bursting with pride. You’ve mentored these kids since they were brand-new ninth graders who got lost on the way to their lockers. Now, they’re getting ready to cross the graduation stage and step into their adult lives.

“My reward — I call it the Super Bowl of the season — is graduation,” says Ann Griffin, department head for Riverview High School’s college and career counseling. “Graduation is a very emotional moment. I purposely get there early because I want to be able to see and take pictures with and celebrate my students … That’s the biggest reward for me, seeing them get across that stage knowing that I did everything within my capacity to help them figure out what’s next.”

Whatever that “next step” looks like for each of your students, you want to celebrate them. National Decision Day gives you that opportunity (and a chance to take extra pictures before graduation day). With the help of school counselors, we’ve compiled a list of National Decision Day event ideas ranging from simple bingo games to school-wide celebrations.

The most important tip? Make sure your event recognizes every senior. “All paths lead to success, so we're celebrating all paths of our graduates, not just the university ones,” explains Cindy Topdemir, coordinator of the counselor education program at the University of South Florida and a licensed mental health counselor.

Griffin agrees. “I’m a firm believer in celebrating all accomplishments and all decisions,” she says. “In this day and age … not every career path requires a college degree.”

Let’s dive into these seven ideas for celebrating National Decision Day at your high school.

The Most Popular Event: A Cafeteria Celebration

On May 1, transform the cafeteria into a fun lunchtime event honoring your seniors and their post-grad paths. Both Topdemir and Griffin listed this event as one of the most popular, and for good reason. It’s simple, budget-friendly, and inclusive of the whole school.

Make It a Banner Event

You know all those banners and pennants colleges send you? Time to make the most of them. Put them on a table in the cafeteria and ask students to sign the ones representing their chosen school. Since you won’t have pre-made banners for every path, cut out some blank ones using a template and construction paper. Students can decorate these to represent their vocational program, military branch, or new job.

Once they’re satisfied with their decorations, they can pose with their banners in a DIY photobooth.

Make a DIY Photobooth

“I'm a little extra with everything that I do,” Griffin says with a laugh. She hangs balloons around a faux brick backdrop with inspirational quotes and tells students to dress for the occasion.

“They can wear their college gear or career gear,” Griffin says. “They may create outfits or draw on their jeans and their shirts [to] represent their programs … It's just a day for them to be able to brag on themselves and the fact that they've made that choice for themselves, and they're proud of those choices.”

Let Students Take the Lead

“One of the bigger ways of getting more of the students engaged in the activity is by using their peers,” Griffin says. She asks younger students to give a shoutout for each senior over the PA system. “There's a group of students that are in charge of the microphone and making the announcements: ‘Hey, Ann Griffin made a decision to go to USF,’ and then the whole cafeteria cheers.”

“It’s a great way to show younger students, ‘This can be you when you get to senior year,’” she says. “It gets them excited about it, and every year they're like, ‘Okay. We're going to do it again [for my turn], right?’

“Yes,” she tells them. “Let’s get these plans in motion.”

If your student’s plans include college, you can share our free college planning guide with step-by-step tips for every grade of high school.

More Great Ways to Celebrate

Although the cafeteria celebration was the most popular event mentioned by college counselors, they also gave a ton of other Decision Day ideas.

Social Media Shoutouts

For better or worse, most seniors spend about five hours a day on social media.  We might as well celebrate them in their own (digital) backyard.

In the weeks leading up to National Decision Day, create social media posts that celebrate your students’ choices:

• “Shout out to these five incredible students who are starting their engineering careers at a local trade school!”
• “Congratulations to this group of new Marines and Navy Seals!”
• “Hats off to our Harvard-bound Valedictorian!"

T-Shirt Day

On National Decision Day, students can wear shirts branded with their chosen path. (This will go over especially well if your school has a dress code. You know your kids will jump at any excuse to wear jeans and a T-shirt!)

If you want the fun to last all week, try themed days, Topdemir suggests: On Monday, everyone going into the military wears their shirts; on Tuesday, it’s out-of-state college shirts; on Wednesday, it’s trade school shirts, etc.

Seeing other students’ shirts sparks conversations, Topdemir says: Oh, you’re going to the University of South Florida? Me too!

Resources and Workshops

As a counselor, you know better than anyone that life doesn’t stop after graduation. In the cafeteria, dedicate a table to resources on financial aid, last-minute housing, mental health tips, and scholarships. It’s a gentle way to remind students, “There's still a few more things you have to do before you go off to college,” Topdemir says.

You can also host a “life skills group” to get students ready for independence. “It’s really for the kids that, for the first time, are going to be off on their own,” Topdemir says. “Let's talk about how we're going to manage stress, how we're going to manage our homework, and how we're going to budget our money.”

Community Events

Want to do something extra special? Throw a big celebration at a local park and invite your graduating students’ families. Since not all students have supportive parents available, you may want to extend the invite to their academic mentors, coaches, or community leaders.

To offset the cost, ask local businesses to help sponsor the event. It’s good marketing for them and a chance to recruit employees (they can host booths with summer job opportunities).

Topdemir suggests setting up photo booths, serving crowd favorites like hot dogs, and leading activities like Decision Day Bingo. To play, everyone gets a bingo card with “decision” boxes, like Find Someone Going to an HBCU or Take a Selfie with Someone Joining the Navy.

At the end of the event, students can bring their full bingo cards to you for a prize.

Alumni Visits

Around Decision Day, invite alumni to return and give tips for success after high school. Choose younger alumni who are college-age, advises Topdemir, so your high schoolers can relate to them. The alumni panel can answer questions like:

• What did you wish you knew before going to college/joining the military/starting this career?
• What’s the most important thing to focus on in your freshman year of college?
• How did you get involved in your new school?
• How did you take care of your mental health in college?
• What tips do you have for interviewing for a job?
• How did you learn to network at your new job?

Elementary School Parade

Is your high school associated with an elementary school? Did most of your graduating class come from the same K-5 program? If so, they might want to revisit their former halls in a “Senior Parade.” The elementary kids love cheering as your high schoolers swagger by, sporting their new college or career T-shirts.

You might worry this will be cringe, but “seniors really seem to enjoy doing that, surprisingly,” Topdemir says. It’s a chance to be a role model for the adorable younger kids. Plus, they like seeing their elementary school teachers again and bragging about their chosen paths. “Of course, a lot of the teachers still remember them, so that's a really neat thing.”

How Parents, Families, and Mentors Can Celebrate National Decision Day

As your students’ counselor, you’re part of a bigger support system that includes their relatives and mentors. To help them celebrate their student, we created a simple downloadable you can hand out in 1:1 meetings or attach to newsletters.

Send Photos

Parents won’t be able to attend every event (like a cafeteria celebration), so make sure to take photos for them. Griffin compiles a huge photo slideshow to share with families, so they can see their kid’s excitement about their post-grad decisions.

Encourage Unconditional Support

For students who are still figuring out their journey, Decision Day can bring extra stress. Griffin talks to families about the importance of unconditional support, especially if their kid is “teetering between career paths or college choices.” The most important thing: Don’t make your student feel bad about their indecision. For some of us, the process just takes longer! Instead, help them explore their options and find volunteer opportunities to test out potential careers.

It’s also important to show support if your student chooses a different path than you expect, Griffin tells parents. “At some point, the parents have to trust what they poured into their child,” Griffin says. “The student has to be in charge of that [college and career] decision, because it has to be something that’s of interest to them, that they’re going to feel fulfilled by … If they’re doing it for someone else, they may lose that passion.”

Emphasize that All Paths are Valid

You might encounter parents who are upset that their kid didn’t achieve the “traditional” metrics of post-high-school success. Maybe they got rejected from their top choice schools or didn’t get into any colleges at all. It’s essential to reinforce that “there’s not one direct line to success,” Topdemir says. “They can still get to whatever their goal is.”

Help parents to reframe the conversation. This is a great chance to foster resilience and perseverance in their kid. “Hey, maybe they can go to the community college for two years, and then apply or transfer [to a four-year school],” Topdemir says. “Everybody’s path doesn’t look the same.”

Reward Yourself

You’ve gotten your students to this incredible milestone. Make sure you take time to celebrate yourself, too. School counselors “are not ones who traditionally reward themselves as much as they should,” says Topdemir. “It’s important for school counselors and for teachers to remember self-care and wellness.”

Keep photos from your Decision Day events as a reminder of your impact. “I have my photos to look back on,” says Griffin. “I love when [students] come back to visit after graduation, and they update me on their progress and what they’re doing.”

You may not even realize how important you are to the students. “For some of the students, it goes a little deeper than even I thought,” says Griffin. “They’re just like, ‘You know what, Miss, I appreciate you just taking the time to listen … Just that time, it really helped me get some things figured out.’ It’s those pivotal moments that can be a turning point for a lot of students.”

As Griffin puts it, your work as a counselor is “relevant, it’s valid, it’s being utilized, and it’s needed.”

At USF, we know your value, and we’re here to support however we can. For more resources and tips, subscribe to our college counselor newsletter and check out the College Counselor’s Corner on our blog.