High School Educators Talk Promposals
Creating the perfect promposal has become just as important as scoring the right outfit and date to the high school dance.
Extending elaborate invitations to the prom -- commonly known as promposals because they resemble marriage proposals -- seems to have become pretty much expected among the Instagram generation.
[Get tips for parents to discuss prom safety with teens.]
But the gestures can get expensive. The average American household with teens plans to spend $324 on promposals in 2015, according to a nationwide survey from credit card company Visa Inc. released last week.
"I think it is partly because kids are so much on the social media now that when they actually get a chance to grandstand, they want to jump on it. They want to take advantage of it," says Rodney Logan, principal of Ewing High School in New Jersey, on the practice. "Plus, you hear a lot of times about students asking celebrities and celebrities agreeing to come, and so they are trying to outdo each other."
One teen in New York got several football players from the New York Jets to help out with her promposal, The Associated Press reported last month.
"Prom has been going on for as long as I can remember and longer, so this just adds, I think, just a little more creativity to it, a little more fun," says Jayne Sheltra, an English teacher and the senior class adviser at Biddeford High School in Maine.
Her students held a contest last year for the most creative promposal. The winner received two tickets to the prom.
"We were looking to sell prom tickets anyway and it would just sort of get the message out," she says.
Sheltra says that promposals haven't become disruptive at her school.
But the same can't be said everywhere. High schools in Pennsylvania and Texas have banned promposals, according to local news reports.
Logan, the principal, says he doesn't usually have a problem with these extravagant invitations, as long as the students ask and tell him what their plan is.
[Find out how to spend less on a prom dress.]
"I tell the students all the time, 'You can do just about anything you want, as long as it's not degrading to anybody, it doesn't cause the custodians any more work or anybody any more work, and it doesn't damage anything,'" says Logan, who has been in education for about 20 years.
Logan has only had one negative incident to date, he says, when a group of about 150 to 200 students gathered in the hallway in between classes to witness an attempted promposal.
"When you see that and you don't know what is going on, the first thought going through your mind is there's a fight," he says. When the person being asked didn't show up, Logan asked everyone to get to class. Most students obeyed, except for one student who got a little aggressive.
His students, however, have usually been very respectful.
"The kids really get excited by it," he says. "They really put a lot of work into it and so it is kind of a fun distraction during the school day, if it is done at the right time and in the right way."
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Alexandra Pannoni is an education staff writer at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at apannoni@usnews.com.
