Who Is Telling Your Story?

On October 10, 2013 I received an email, "Coach Davis, You have been selected as the Key Communicator for Douglass Elementary.  I will forward more information as it becomes available. Thanks!! So now I am wondering, what this is going to entail? Well I got my answer, four days later I received this email, "Dear Key Communicator: Attached is the invitation for the upcoming workshop this Friday, October 18th".

The objective of the Key Communicator workshop was to have a designated person on the campus responsible for gathering and telling the good news of the great things going on in the classroom.  This is coming in the wake of the negative waves that have swept over the district recently.

I and other communicators from campuses around the district were briefed on our roles and responsibilities. We were shown how to fill out and use News Release forms that can be sent to the media. Tim Holt (Director of Instructional Technology) gave information on how to increase the campus presence on the web and social media, even how to get your campus news on TV or in the El Paso Times.

There are several ways to get started, telling your story. One, is to publish a classroom newsletter, or publish a grade level newsletter written by you or one that is student driven and circulate that amongst the grade level(s). You can send it home also (the down side is that newsletters are one direction do not allow for two way communication).

Using a blog would allow for greater feed back. A blog is a website organized around short writings called "posts". They can be compared to journals or "logs". Within these blogs one can have links to other websites or blogs of interest.  Blogs are excellent ways to get your students writing more, with you at the forefront, setting the example.

Setting up your blog as an addition to your webpage is very easy to do especially with the website construction application from Weebly.com (See Clay White for advice).  Douglass teachers you could also log on to the website and investigate the link for Blogger.com if you want to blog independently.

I will be posting to this site on a regular basis about ideas, best practices, and interesting workshops, and my own thoughts.

You can subscribe to this site easily. What that will do is send you an email when a new post has been added to my blog, just below this posted blog is the link to subscribe.  Log in and follow the simple instructions.

Blogging is one of the many ways we as educators on this campus can get the good news out about the great things that are going on here on our campus.  Step up to the plate and lets start knocking them out of the park.

Please take the time to comment in the section just below the last paragraph.

Have a great day in every way! Go Dragons!!

You can contact me via email (gadavis@episd.org) or FaceBook or Twitter (Dragoncoach1)