What's Your Story? #savmp

Here's the script.....

"I don't have time!"

"We can't get wi-fi on campus."

"We don't really have anything to share."

"There are SO many meetings during the day."

"That's totally your thing Adam, what is that called again?"

We've heard all the excuses.....it's 'called' sharing! Sharing all the #eduawesome that's happening at your school. In the business world the term is marketing and companies spend lots of time and money doing this. 

WHY do we wait, for that one day each year called Open House to share the amazing work that's happening at school? (separate post on this idea later) The more your parent community knows what's going on and feels connected, the more supportive and engaged they'll be.

The NY Times doesn't publish a paper once a year, they publish everyday with updates throughout. You can get NASDAQ updates with all your stock quotes daily, from your phone! Schools need to be doing the same, and it starts with the Principal!

Saying you have nothing to share, reminds me of a book I just read. Ralph Tells A Story is an awesome read aloud book (it's my December choice for John Swett) and jumpstart for those Principals that feel they have nothing to share. 

Here's the dust jacket description for the book......

"Nothing ever happens to Ralph. So every day when it's time to write stories, Ralph thinks really hard. He stares at his paper. He stares at the ceiling.

But he has no stories!

With the help of his classmates, Ralph realizes that a great story can be about something very small....and that maybe he really does have some stories to tell."

We're not even talking about entire stories to share, daily nuggets/snippets into the life of your school is enough.

How do we share our story? Twitter and Remind are the two favored apps for John Swett Elementary, with many other supporting apps rounding out our workflow!

What should the Principal (and teachers) be sharing?

- Writers Workshop anchor posters to help parents continue the conversation at home! (Use Remind for this also, great way to instantly tap into your parent community with their attach feature.)

- Artwork

- Students collaborating on their mobile devices

- Screenshots of student work in Google Drive

- Tweet of the weeks authored by students

- Photos of our garden

- Book recommendations from kids

- Project Based Learning in action

- Students blogging

- Number Talks on the SMART board

- All the Donors Choose grants your staff has posted! We have almost $70,000 in grants funded in just over two years, thank you Twitter!

Below is our first JSE Tweet, little over two years ago! @jseroadrunners

As of this morning, 8,200 and going strong....plus ENTIRE teaching staff Tweets! 

Principals shouldn't just be curriculum and technology experts, we need to be the Chief Marketing Officer as well. It's not enough to just create a Twitter or Remind account, you need to actively promote. Tell your families, make banners, put on your website, and of course create your own school hashtag. Ours is #teamkid and makes it mush easier for everyone to follow our story. 

We have banners (vistaprint.com) on our fence, inside the cafeteria and on the marque. Promote promote promote!

What's Your Story?!?!?!?!