After an exciting and particularly productive meeting yesterday the 10th grade team has many ideas and a whole philosophy we'd like to adopt for next year.
As we move to a B school we decided that now was a perfect time to do some serious marketing for our little village school. The ideas started pouring, but basically all of them involved a way to get all of the good things about our small school out into the public. We thought about making a list of all of our pros and cons, much like a teen aged boy might do when trying to figure out which girl to ask to prom. We are the girl, and we need more boys asking us to prom. We don't just want to keep the kids we have, we want those kids who feel their current school isn't right for them. If kids are leaving Bigfork because it is too small, it stands to reason that there are kids at Flathead that want to leave because it is too big, because they don't like their coach, or because they feel like they haven't had the ability to shine. Let's get them!
We also loked into several ideas that would give the students and the faculty a more conected feeling to the school. Such as a teacher section of the bulletin that could include actions that happened at the board meetings, field trips, projects, etc. We thought of a contest for students to come up with a new school logo and 'motto.' We thought of an idea that was done before called empty bowl, a community fund raiser where every kid in the school makes a bowl and we sell them with soup (Mrs. Taylor may punch me for bringing this up).
This led to our philosophical idea:
We believe it should be our goal to create opportunities to not only do great things, (BE PROACTIVE) but to show them off as well. Our empty bowl could be an open house that shows off pictures of the vehicles that the auto-shop has donated, art work and photography, photos or tree planting, Bio Club activities, sewing projects, food drive photos, reading at nursing home, litter pickup, Interact as elves, etc. It's amazing how long the list becomes. We should do something for the community every quarter.
It should be our goal to be printed in the newspaper not just for our sports but for our community based deeds as well.
It should be our goal to create opportunities for our kids to shine . . . and that will be the best possible marketing campaign of all.
What we are looking for: A list, literally, of what we have to offer students. Let's ask our kids what they like about our school as opposed to what they want to change, and let's build a list right here that we can share with community members and ourselves to help us feel good about where we work.
Other proactive ideas that we can implement that, 1 gives kids an opportunity to show off their talents, 2 gets us good press instead of bad, 3 plays on a new era at Bigfork High School (not the littlest little A school, but a mighty and proud B school.)
10th HPT thanks you for your time and for all you do for kids.
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YIPEE!! I am proud to work in this district and super proud of our kids!! There is so much good and sometimes all we hear as staff is the bad news. We need to stir up the positive in our teacher circles,too. We are doing a good job and we need to let that be seen.
ReplyDeleteThis post was a breath of fresh air today. And a perfect example of what HPT's were designed to be... proactive, problem solving, JOYFUL entities! Bringing out the best in ourselves as teachers, and fueling us up to give our very best to our students.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to use this post as an opportunity to share an idea from Barb McPherson (Holmes) (Ex BHS Eng teacher) She said it has helped her high school in the Seattle area build a community feel as well as support literacy. Each teacher photocopies the cover of the book they are reading for their own personal reading and posts it outside their classroom door.Students are encouraged to do the same. It has generated great discussions around literature and looks pretty spiffy too.
mary a
Kudos to you 10th grade HPT, you are a wonder at keeping us innovative and inspired! Great ideas that can be embraced K-12! When I posed the idea of a list of great things about Bigfork School as a journal topic Friday, my 5th graders put their heads down and went right to work. No problem thinking of things. You're right, we know what is awesome but we don't always remember to share it and share it creatively.
ReplyDelete! Interesting! Now I call that thinking out of our walls! Great job
ReplyDeleteThanks again for sharing and inspiring others to do the same. Ana Y.