PROMOTE PUBLIC EDUCATION
PROMOTE YOUR SCHOOL
Show everybody what public schools can do!
https://k12playground.com/
Future Employers, Colleges, Vocational Technology and Teachers will be able to see your skills and talent if you display your work online.
When Colleges don’t require the SAT or ACT students can prove what they know on their own terms.
When the state test won’t test or acknowledge skills, then you need to prove what you know on your own terms.
Thomas Ultican @tultican
How Public Education Can Survive…and Prosper – Merrow may be onto something here.
How Public Education Can Survive…and Prosper
https://themerrowreport.com/2022/10/04/how-public-education-can-survive-and-prosper/
To survive and prosper, more public schools must do what public libraries did: 1) sell themselves to parents and the general public and 2) get better.
Displaying student work on school walls is not enough. Instead, students should be working in public and with the public.
Here are a few possibilities:
- Teams of 7th and 8th graders interview local merchants about their businesses and then post the stories, with photos, on the school website.
- Groups of 3rd and 4th graders go to local nursing homes to read to, and chat with, residents. Post the student reports, with photos, on the web.
- Invest in an outdoor air quality monitor (less than $300) so that teams of 5th and 6th graders can monitor the local air quality several times each day. Link with other middle schools around the state so students can compare and contrast air quality. Invite local experts to Zoom with students to answer questions. The reports should be posted regularly on the school website.
- 10th and 11th graders ask local residents–especially those without school age children–to recite well-known lines like Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy. Then students should edit the videos so that each resident has one or two lines. Next, post the resulting montages.
What is likely to happen is a groundswell of public enthusiasm: “Did you know what kids are doing these days?” and “Don’t you wish you could be a kid again?” and “Did you see me on the web? Reciting Shakespeare!”
Activities like the above are game-changers for children as well, but schools must do even more. Today’s kids swim in the internet’s sea of information, and so schools must help them learn to distinguish truth and facts from fiction and misinformation….while encouraging them to choose facts and truths.
Because the purpose of school is to Help Grow American Citizens, it’s worth unpacking that phrase. “Help” conveys an essential point: schooling is a cooperative endeavor with parents and educators working in the best interests of children.