These Four Walls

How do you market your school? What's your school's story, and how do you tell it? How do you share vital information with your students, parents, and community? That's the latest buzz around our school district this year. It really has changed my viewpoint on the need to find relevant ways to communicate with our school's stakeholders.  The old printed school newsletter just doesn't cut it anymore, as we wonder why so many of the "handouts" just don't get read. Family and parent engagement will not happen until we improve our ways of reaching all our families. Our society wants information instantly and in bite size chunks, with lots of reminders! Isn't that a statement on the fast paced lifestyle so many of us have adopted? Good or bad, it's the reality for many of our school families. I spent a lot of my summer on Twitter. It was life changing. I started following some amazing educators with so many exciting ideas. It completely reignited

Teacher Joy! I love it when teachers are shown appreciation for the tremendous job that they do! I had the pleasure of being involved in a day of camaraderie and school spirit before the chaos of the first day of students.  Five days of professional development can become pretty intense with curriculum updates, district agendas, classroom preparations and planning. My hope was to give our teachers the much needed opportunity to enjoy a day of building positive school culture and climate. "Invest in your people" was the agenda of the day (Pirate style, of course)!  The Leadership Team (that's me on the right) I planned this day for weeks and it couldn't have turned out any better! The professional development focus was a kick-off of our school-wide book study of Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess. The atmosphere was set with pirate music, pirate names, decorations, costumes and treasure boxes! We even had a ukulele lesson by our music teacher! Teacher Jo