Community engagement is something many schools are looking to improve. As the years go by it seems to get harder to find ways to get the community to come through the doors. The world moves faster than ever before and we face competition not only for resources, but for peoples time. For the last two weeks I've really been thinking a lot about what gets people to commit their time to one thing over another. What I've come up with was pretty simple. It seems as though people invest their time with a few major considerations:
The third point is the one that struck me most in my reflection. I can't even count how many times I've made time where time didn't seem to exist for someone that had gone the extra mile for me. From attending graduations, weddings and kids birthday parties to taking time away to help a friend in need I can't even count how many times the rationale behind dedicating my time toward something was justified by that third reason. With that in mind, I am hoping to get approval to try something new this year. Instead of trying to pull the community into our school, I want to send our school to the community. Every year schools send teachers out for various professional learning events, curriculum writing and many other endeavors in what many of us refer to as "school business" sub situations. This year I am going to ask about whether or not a school can do that for staff who want to participate in volunteering one day at a local community outreach program or business to give back to our community. The rough draft of the idea goes something like this:
My hope is that the impact of how we serve our community leads to more people wanting to plug-in with our school. The idea being to grow a community mindset behind the third rationale I wrote about earlier in this post. I should point out that none of this has been approved. In fact, I haven't even brought it up yet but since I'm blogging about it, I'm accountable to try. There is a chance it may not fly. There's also a chance it revolutionizes the way we view community and grows a deeper sense of purpose among our staff. It's an idea that I don't think I would have been brave enough to approach before starting this blogging journey. I've not always been one to share my ideas so publicly, but after seeing my former principal tweet the picture below today, you never know which of your ideas just might catch on.
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AuthorJeff Lahey Archives
January 2020
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