As I drive around the country, I often listen to talk radio. I know…I’m a glutton for punishment. It’s truly unbelievable what I hear when the topic circles around to education. Apparently, this world would be a lot better off without this evil and malevolent group of people known as teachers who are hell bent on destroying society (Not to mention lazy, greedy, and only there to promote the bloody sacrifice of small, cute, cuddly animals…like kittens).
I can’t tell you how often I have heard educators complain to me about what they hear from pundits, political candidates, their parent communities, in snide remarks at social events, and even overheard in restaurants and stores.
A typical comment I hear is, “It’s like they have zero idea what we actually do!”
Bingo.
That is EXACTLY the problem.
We don’t tell them! Or, when we do, we use mediums that are ineffective or outright useless. Nobody is opening your school’s fancy email newsletter and your paper newsletter is going straight into the trash!!! IF…and this is a big if…it ever makes it home, out of the backpack, and into the hands of a parent.
That means if those are the only ways we communicate and share all of the awesomeness that happens in our schools we are entirely missing our audience. They will continue to get their information about our schools, and education in general, through word of mouth and social media channels. If we aren’t there…we don’t have a chance to shape the story.
The way I see it, we have two choices:
- We can complain about it until we’re blue in the face (Smurfs are cool!) and nothing will change except maybe our blood pressure.
- We can compete! We need to go where our audience IS…not where we think they should be. We need to do a better job of telling and selling OUR story! We need to open multiple channels of communication simultaneously so we reach the largest percentage of our stakeholders as we possible can.
But…who has the time to do that?
Where do we start?
Fortunately for all of us, principals Ryan McLane (@McLane_Ryan) and Eric Lowe (@Ericlowe21) have created the ultimate guide to help us reach our parents and communities with the amazing work we do.
Your School Rocks…So Tell People! Passionately Pitch and Promote the Positives Happening on Your Campus is the answer to our prayers! In an extraordinarily practical way they have taken this topic and made it accessible and imminently DOABLE.
Not sure how the technology works? No worries! Ryan and Eric have even included QR codes that link to video tutorials to get you up to speed. Starting with an amazing chapter on how to create a video newsletter, it moves on to cover a wide array of ways that you can actively engage your school community. Instagram? Got it! Facebook? You bet! Twitter? Of course! iMovie? Yep! Flipboard, Periscope, blogs…you get the idea.
I love that they include many real-world examples of how powerful this can be to your class, school, and district. They are DOING this stuff!! In fact, they have links to their examples of all of this so you can see what they do.
Here’s a teaser:
What is the first thing the typical student does when they wake up? Bathroom? No way! Brush their teeth? Not a chance.
They check their phone!!! How can we take advantage of this for positive purposes? Your School Rocks provides you an amazingly simple yet powerful answer. You will use this!
Is this just for administrators? Nope! There are multiple examples of how teachers are creatively using these ideas to share and connect with parents.
We can’t wait for you to help us shape and change the public narrative on education and we couldn’t be more pleased to publish this book to help you do it! Join the conversation at #YourSchoolRocks on Twitter.
Thanks so much for your support of our DBC Inc. authors and projects! We are proud to say, that in addition to Amazon, it is available at Barnes & Noble online, as well.
With #Gratitude,
Dave
PS:
Yes!! Ryan is the creator of the amazing Teach Like a Pirate Day concept and talks about how these ideas were used to promote that in his school community. Movie trailers anyone??? You’ll love how he does it.