Tie-Dye at Detroit Prep
One of my favorite activities that I help my students to create is their annual Field Day T-Shirt. Every late May, early June the big three gallon buckets come out along with thousands of rubber bands, gloves and the brightly colored dye mixes we use to help our festive shirts come to life. While it is a heavy lift tradition, it also is one of the most rewarding and joyful times of the school year for me–our community comes together to make it happen.
Tie-Dyeing shirts at the end of the school year was an already established end of year tradition when I started teaching at DP 5 years ago. Since then the process has evolved and grown to accommodate the almost 400 shirts we created this year and the close to 500 shirts we’ll make once our school is at capacity. I’m incredibly proud of the procedure that’s been put into place and each year even though the amount of shirts grows the smoother and more easily the week goes!
For me, the planning starts early (around February). For the students, their planning starts a week or two before we actually dye the shirts. The first step for the kiddos is to choose which Tie-Dye pattern they would like their shirt to be for that school year. We stick to the same pattern options each time; students often will try to collect each pattern shirt or choose the same one every year. The reason we have the tie-dye “consultation” meeting is so that if a student is absent the day their crew dyes their shirt, myself or another student can make their shirt for them.
Each grade level has a preassigned color dye that they use for a number of different reasons. First of all it ensures that on Field Day, our entire community can see which grade level a student is in by the color of their shirt, which helps us to make sure everyone is where they are supposed to be. Secondly, it creates a sense of unity–each grade level has the same color shirts and helps them to feel that they belong to a team. Additionally, it helps to us to be more eco friendly during the tie-dyeing process–we use less dye, student shirts can all be washed in the same laundry load rather than multiple loads, saving water and energy and shirts don’t need to be stored in multiple smaller, single use plastic bags so that colors don’t bleed. The end result is a lovely, moving rainbow effect on Field Day, with our youngest students wearing red tie-dye and our current old students wearing pink. Once we have an eighth grade, students who have completed each grade level will get to create their own rainbow shirt during their last Tie-Dye Day before moving onto high school.
To me the best part of Tie-Dye is how excited our ENTIRE community is to participate! This year, we needed more volunteers than ever before and almost 75% of the slots were filled within the first 24 hours of being posted. Parents helped sort and label all of the shirts by size, crew and students so that they were ready to go. So many grown ups were on hand to help the day off and if we were ever short handed, volunteers would show up within 30 minutes to support. Parents and staff alike un-tied, rinsed out, washed and dried the shirts so that they were ready to be distributed almost a full week before Field Day, which was the fastest we’ve ever gotten the process completed so far. I’m so excited that I’ve gotten the opportunity to share our Tie-Dye process and the joy it brings to myself, the students and hopefully, all of our DP community, with those of you reading this blog post. It really is one of the best parts of the school year and I’m incredibly grateful to be able to do this yearly.