It is the time of year when seniors need to get serious about college applications and fundraisers need to start making their end of year appeals. Below are some resources to help you on your way.

~Mike

Opportunities for Students

• Action For Nature Offers International Young Eco-Hero Awards

Deadline: February 28, 2008

Action For Nature , a nonprofit organization that encourages young people around the world to carry out individual environmental action projects, presents the International Young Eco-Hero Awards to recognize the individual accomplishments of young people (ages 8-16) whose personal actions have significantly improved the environment.

Action For Nature will award cash prizes of up to $500 each to young Eco-Heroes for their outstanding accomplishments in environmental advocacy, environmental health, research, or protection of the natural world.

The applications will be judged according to several criteria, including but not limited to originality, difficulty, organization, length of time devoted to the project, influencing/educating others, use of outside resources (e.g., library, experts, media, community leaders), degree of success in reaching goals, and the impact on the environment.

See the Action For Nature Web site, for complete program information and application guidelines.

Opportunities for Teachers

• FastTrack Fundraising Tips and Articles

This is a great site with helpful tips and ideas for a full range of fundraising activities, including school, club, and sports fundraising. Visit their Web site and get Inspired!

Opportunities for Schools and Communities

• Educational Full Scholarship for Single Mother

The Sister Thea Bowman Foundation has four scholarships for African-American single mothers and their child to attend the College of St. Mary in Omaha, Nebraska.

The Foundation will grant $30,000.00 over a period of four years to the College of St. Mary on behalf of each student. In return the College of St. Mary will match that grant with an additional $24,000. The student must be an African-American single mother who has completed high school. She must be from low-income housing. She must be able to gain admission to College of St. Mary. She need not be Catholic.

Each student will have an African-American mentor during her course of study at the College of St. Mary. Each student will also have an African-American host family from Omaha who will also serve as mentor. Each mother may take up to two children with her to the College of St.
Mary. The cut off age for the child is nine. Each mother will live in a dorm with other single mothers and their children. This dorm has been especially renovated to accommodate mothers and their children.

If interested, please contact Mary Lou Jennings, Executive Director of the Sister Thea Bowman Foundation at: marylouj11@aol.com.

More Movement Ideas

What are some other ways you can bring movement into the classroom?

So you want to get your class up and moving... where to begin? These are a few simple activities you can use to get students on their feet and out of their seats. As recess time gets taken over by the cold weather, some of these energy-burners may become the difference between an unruly afternoon and one that makes way for learning!

Warm Ups
Count Down Shake Down: The class should do this in unison. Beginning with the right hand, shake and count in rhythm 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, then do the same with the left hand, the right foot and the left foot. Begin again with the right hand and count in rhythm this time from 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, move to the left hand, right foot and left foot. Continue counting down until you get to one. You can start at a higher or lower number depending on how much shaking you need the class to do!

What's Shakin'? Call out parts of the body to shake, for example:
Shake your right hand.
Add your left shoulder.
Add your right knee.
What's shakin'? Students will respond: "right hand, left shoulder, right knee"
Now, take out your right knee.
Add your left knee.
Take out your right hand.
Add your head.
What's shakin'? Students will respond: "left shoulder, left knee, head"

Zip, Zap, Zop: This activity is done in a circle. The starter gestures (with the palms of both hands together, arms straight, and all fingers pointing out) to someone in the circle and says, "ZIP". That person gestures to someone else in the circle and says, "ZAP". That person gestures to someone else in the circle and says "ZOP". The next player says "ZIP" and play continues.

Subject Specific Movements
Vocabulary Exercises: Students create stretches or exercises that express the meaning behind each of their vocabulary words. These exercises can be used to start each class period or practiced right before the test so the words are fresh in their minds.

Math Movement Chants: Many teachers use math chants and accompanying movements to help students remember concepts or formulas. This site may provide you with a few ideas but you can just as easily have your students create their own.
http://www.songsforteaching.com/numberscounting.htm

Acting Out History: Have students choose particular events from their history or social studies text books to dramatize. Acting out these events and then talking about the experience is a good way to make these "events from the past" relevant to students' lives today.

Science in the Everyday: As much as possible try to connect science concepts to real-world applications. Bring in living things when discussing biology, use common household chemicals when talking about chemistry, look at everyday phenomena to explain physical theories. This is more work for you up front, but the more students connect what they learn in a textbook with their own lives, the more interesting and engaging the material will seem!

New Thanksgiving Stories

At my first Thanksgiving as a new teacher I was the center of attention at the dinner table. My first three months had provided me with plenty of captivating tales to tell. It felt good to make the table ooh and ahh, laugh and gasp, over my stories. But I remember feeling slightly uncomfortable after the dinner table talk died down.

These stories were of the variety that capture public attention, but they were not stories that captured the magic I felt in being a teacher. They were true, but they were also mainly shocking. Like most of the news we hear about schools they featured the appallingly low skills of my students, the struggle to overcome a tremendous lack of resources in my school, the atrocious behaviors that cropped up in my classroom, the adult experiences endured by teenage children, etc., etc., etc.

My stories were not of the inspiring variety, and I remember thinking when I went to bed that I had created a grim picture of my school in the minds of my audience. Though I knew the picture was accurate, it was not complete, and I was sad that I had not used my moment on the stage to talk about all the beautiful things that also happened within those cinder-block walls.

Maybe this is why people have such a bad opinion of schools in general. We don't tend to tell many of the good stories, although in even the worst schools wonderful things happen every day. These are not the things of bold headlines, often they're so tiny they escape the notice of nearly everyone in the building.

Last week we asked our Teacher Advisory Board, a group of about 15 DC Public School teachers, to share their inspiring stories from the past 3 months of school. It took a minute for the group to warm up to the request. That's just not the way we're used to talking about school.

Eventually these are some of the beautiful things that came out:

• A Head Start student who has already been kicked out of 5 elementary schools finally found a teacher who is taking the time to see what makes him tick. He's learning to work with his peers and trust the love he's getting from his teacher.
  
• A music teacher found a way to let a suspended student attend the opera because she'd seen a spark light up in him when he studied the score.
  
• Tasked with the challenge of teaching a classroom full of boys, a teacher changed her style to incorporate more kinesthetic learning in the day.
  
• After struggling under challenging leadership for a few years, a teacher has discovered new enthusiasm for his profession with an inspiring new principal.
• A lesson on nutrition empowered one young girl to teach her mother about what constitutes a healthy breakfast.

These are just a few of the stories we heard, and they're not the kinds of stories you're likely to see covered on tonight's evening news. But they are the kinds of stories that keep teachers coming back to school every day, and they're the stories that hint at the slow but incredibly powerful work we are engaged in when we set about the task of helping children reach their full potential.

I like to think I didn't tell these kinds of stories that Thanksgiving long ago because I didn't have them to tell. But I did. In truth I think I knew they wouldn't get the same reaction out of my audience. Perhaps if we told these stories more, people would begin to expect more out of our schools because they would see what is possible.

This Thanksgiving I have the tales of these teachers to tell. I have the other variety too. But I've come to believe those really aren't the stories people need to hear.

New Thanksgiving Stories

Monday, November 19, 2007

New Thanksgiving Stories

At my first Thanksgiving as a new teacher I was the center of attention at the dinner table. My first three months had provided me with plenty of captivating tales to tell. It felt good to make the table ooh and ahh, laugh and gasp, over my stories. But I remember feeling slightly uncomfortable after the dinner table talk died down.

These stories were of the variety that capture public attention, but they were not stories that captured the magic I felt in being a teacher. They were true, but they were also mainly shocking. Like most of the news we hear about schools they featured the appallingly low skills of my students, the struggle to overcome a tremendous lack of resources in my school, the atrocious behaviors that cropped up in my classroom, the adult experiences endured by teenage children, etc., etc., etc.

My stories were not of the inspiring variety, and I remember thinking when I went to bed that I had created a grim picture of my school in the minds of my audience. Though I knew the picture was accurate, it was not complete, and I was sad that I had not used my moment on the stage to talk about all the beautiful things that also happened within those cinder-block walls.

Maybe this is why people have such a bad opinion of schools in general. We don't tend to tell many of the good stories, although in even the worst schools wonderful things happen every day. These are not the things of bold headlines, often they're so tiny they escape the notice of nearly everyone in the building.

Last week we asked our Teacher Advisory Board, a group of about 15 DC Public School teachers, to share their inspiring stories from the past 3 months of school. It took a minute for the group to warm up to the request. That's just not the way we're used to talking about school.

Eventually these are some of the beautiful things that came out:

• A Head Start student who has already been kicked out of 5 elementary schools finally found a teacher who is taking the time to see what makes him tick. He's learning to work with his peers and trust the love he's getting from his teacher.
  
• A music teacher found a way to let a suspended student attend the opera because she'd seen a spark light up in him when he studied the score.
  
• Tasked with the challenge of teaching a classroom full of boys, a teacher changed her style to incorporate more kinesthetic learning in the day.
  
• After struggling under challenging leadership for a few years, a teacher has discovered new enthusiasm for his profession with an inspiring new principal.
• A lesson on nutrition empowered one young girl to teach her mother about what constitutes a healthy breakfast.

These are just a few of the stories we heard, and they're not the kinds of stories you're likely to see covered on tonight's evening news. But they are the kinds of stories that keep teachers coming back to school every day, and they're the stories that hint at the slow but incredibly powerful work we are engaged in when we set about the task of helping children reach their full potential.

I like to think I didn't tell these kinds of stories that Thanksgiving long ago because I didn't have them to tell. But I did. In truth I think I knew they wouldn't get the same reaction out of my audience. Perhaps if we told these stories more, people would begin to expect more out of our schools because they would see what is possible.

This Thanksgiving I have the tales of these teachers to tell. I have the other variety too. But I've come to believe those really aren't the stories people need to hear.

FUNdraising Fridays

To all Inspired Students, Teachers, and Schools,

This week’s exciting opportunities include teacher funding for the addition of Science and Math endorsements, a free set of classic books for school libraries, and a chance for students to participate in a Web site development contest. In addition to these opportunities, awards are available for students who are taking action against global poverty and schools who are instilling students with strong values.

~Mike

Opportunities for Students

• Oracle Education Foundation’s ThinkQuest International 2008

Deadline: April 2, 2008

The Oracle Education Foundation has announced the opening of ThinkQuest International 2008 and is inviting students and teachers from around the globe to take part in the international project learning competition.

ThinkQuest is open to students between the ages of 9 and 19 and their teacher-coaches worldwide. Students are encouraged to team with peers in other regions to develop Web sites on educational topics. The program is designed to help participants develop important skills such as teamwork, critical thinking, self- direction, problem solving, and technology skills.

Qualifying entries will be published in the ThinkQuest Library. Winners will receive prizes from the Oracle Education Foundation, including laptops and $1,000 school grants for the top five teams in each age division, travel to the annual ThinkQuest Live event for the top three teams in each division, and digital cameras for the team that receives the Global Perspectives Award.

Students and educators interested in participating should visit the ThinkQuest Web site.

• Global Action Awards for Global Poverty Efforts

Deadline: January 31, 2008

NetAid, an initiative of Mercy Corps, is accepting applications for the Global Action Awards. The awards honor high school students in the United States who have organized and led a project that has impacted people in poor countries, or raised awareness about global poverty in their own communities.

The awards celebrate young people who have shown great leadership in areas such as preventing disease, alleviating hunger, protecting the environment, promoting human rights, and improving access to clean drinking water, health care, or education. Projects may involve organizing advocacy campaigns, raising funds, volunteering, or using media and technology to involve others in the fight against global poverty.

Guidelines and application materials are available at the NetAid Web site.

Opportunities for Teachers

• The Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB) Funding

PESB has funding available to support teachers to add the following endorsements: Secondary Mathematics, Any Secondary Science area, and Middle Level Mathematics/Science. Funds may be used to pay for PRAXIS II exams, university supervision for the pedagogy assessment, and in some cases, tuition for a limited amount of coursework. Priority will go to teachers currently teaching in secondary math or science without an endorsement, or those whose district would provide the opportunity to teach in one of those areas if an endorsement was earned.

Apply by emailing Mea Moore at PESB: mea.moore@k12.wa.us

For more information on Pathway I and II and endorsement requirements go to the PESB Web site under Quick Links select “Add an Endorsement”.

NOTE: The October 12th deadline referred to in the bulletin has been removed.

Opportunities for Communities and Schools

• National Endowment for the Humanities We the People Bookshelf Program

Deadline: January 25, 2008

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in cooperation with the American Library Association Public Programs Office is accepting applications for the fifth We the People Bookshelf program.

Each year, NEH identifies a theme important to the nation's heritage and selects books that embody that theme to build the We the People Bookshelf. The theme for the 2007-08 Bookshelf is "Created Equal." The program will provide three thousand school (K-12) and public libraries across the United States with a set of classic books related to the "Created Equal" theme.

Any U.S. public library or K-12 school library in the United States and its territories is eligible to apply. School libraries include public, private, parochial, and charter schools. Libraries with collections that circulate to the general public and offer reading-based programs for the general public are eligible to apply. A library system or school district may apply on behalf of its member schools or branches.

Visit the NEH Web site for details about eligibility and instructions for completing the online application.

• K-12 School Awards

The Character Education Partnership (CEP) recognizes K-12 schools and districts throughout the U.S. demonstration outstanding character education initiatives that yield positive results in student behavior, school climate, and academic performance. Although winners may differ in method, content, and scope, all emphasize core ethical values such as honesty, respect, responsibility, and caring.

Eligible applicants include public and private schools. The deadline for applications is December 3, 2007. Approximately 10 winners will be awarded $20,000. For further information, go to the Character Web site.

This is Our Classroom

This is a lesson on belonging as taught by a mysteriously decapitated Nasturtium.

After spending several months getting to know my 9th grade students I had arrived at several conclusions - key amongst them was the realization that they hadn't had many of elementary school experiences I remembered with great fondness from my own childhood. So, I tried to find ways to weave these experiences into their adolescent lives in ways that made them seem (at least tangentially) relevant to the curriculum I had to teach (9th Grade English).

The Nasturtium project was one such effort. Most of my students claimed they had never planted anything in their lives - not even the lima-bean-in-a-cup that is the standard science project of so many Kindergarten classrooms. We were beginning a poetry unit and it seemed like as good a time as any to explore the magic of watching a seed grow. I wanted something more exciting than a lima bean and something that would grow quickly so we could write about this growth process weekly and explore the metaphorical connection between the seed>plant>flower and their own lives. Upon a quick study of flowers, the Nasturtium emerged as the seed of choice with only a week's gestation period and the promise of flowers by the end of the month.

The students were so excited to plant the seeds. They took the watering of those seeds more seriously than they had taken most of what we done all year. The poetry flowed each week as they watched the seeds sprout, grow leaves, and then get moved from cups to pots. Simile, metaphor, and personification came naturally as they saw beautiful parallels between the unfurling of each new leaf and their own emergence into young adulthood.

I had three classes doing the project and each was incredibly possessive of its tray of plants. Students often ran to class early to chatter over how their plants were greener, taller, stronger, than those of another class. (In truth they were all basically the same.) They brought in students from other classes to show off the wondrous lives they were cultivating.

Real excitement began to brew as the month drew to an end and the first bud of a flower appeared. Strangely, only one appeared at first. It belonged to Diana in 3rd period. Each morning hoards of students would pour into my classroom to see if Diana's plant had bloomed. What color would it be? When would it appear? How long would it last? These were the questions that bubbled amongst them. A little jealousy was present, but I never thought it would cause any harm.

Then, one day, probably the very day that bud should have burst open, we arrived at 3rd period and found it severed at the stem. A pair of guilty looking scissors lay on the counter beside the plant tray with traces of green juice fresh along the edge of the blades. Someone had snuck into the room when I wasn't there to commit the crime.

Chaos ensued. Anger rose. Some students began to cry. Threats of payback flew. My students, people who had witnessed human cruelty of the worst kind many times in their young lives, were horrified by this tiny act of plant violence. I did not know what to do, so I set aside my plans for the class, moved the desks into a circle, and we talked about how they were feeling.

This was a class that, at the start of the year, regularly erupted into verbal altercations and had come to blows more than once. But surprisingly, none of the students ever suggested the flower-murderer came from their own class. On this day they were adamant that no one in our class would ever hurt one of their own. Even though only one student's plant was affected, they felt a collective sense of loss because that single flower had been a source of collective pride. As I listened to them speak I realized that my silly plant project had become something much bigger for these students. Perhaps it was because they had been asked to make a personal connection to these plants from the time they were seeds.

After some careful discussion moderation, I successfully convinced the class not to partake in retaliatory pruning of the other classes' plants - and we even got some powerful poetry out of the experience. But the best thing that came out of the Nasturtium project, at least for that class, was not particularly academic. It was a sense of belonging and a sense of collective responsibility for one another. That experience has often made me wonder what would happen in our world if teaching kindness, respect, and compassion were as important in our schools as teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Within a week everyone's plant had bloomed, and Diana's quickly grew another flower of its own. The culprit behind the plant crime never came forward but, lucky for us all, the scissors never struck again.

The Rewards of Taking Risks

A teacher brings a field trip she couldn't take into the classroom. Students take a stand in the name of free expression. Each of these true stories was a risk, and the risk-takers experienced the rewards.

The Risk: Carol teaches Pre-K in the inner city. Her students have never been to a pumpkin patch. She wants to do the traditional "trip to a farm" but due to budgetary constraints and concerns that "out of class time = no learning" she's not allowed to take the students this year. Carol is undeterred. She takes a weekend drive to a pumpkin patch and with her own money buys enough pumpkins for every student in the class. She also buys a bushel of apples, several hay bales, and some corn stalks. "If I can't take them to the farm, I"ll bring the farm to them," she says. On Monday morning she arrives at school before the sun comes up and sets to work creating a "pumpkin patch" on the playground. She covers the pumpkins with hay so the students can hunt for them, and hides the apples as well. She ties the cornstalks to tree trunks and sets up a paint station, a clay station, apumpkin carving station, and a giant tarp/tent. When the students arrive they spend the morning "on the farm."

The Reward: "I might get written up for insubordination," Carol says, "but to see the smiles on my students' faces - that made the whole thing worth it." She recognizes that the learning experience her students had that morning trumps whatever she could have taught them about math or writing.

The Risk: Richard walked into high school one day with his usually blonde hair dyed bright green. His hair caused quite a sensation and, in the eyes of his principal, quite a distraction, so by the time 4th period rolled around he was in the office being suspended. I was Richard's American Literature teacher and it just so happened that we were deep in a week-long debate about the virtues and drawbacks of our American freedoms as described in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. When Richard was missing from class, the students shared his story. They were indignant that he should be suspended for what they considered his right to free expression. I encouraged them to use the power of the pen to share their concerns with the principal. They did, but their letter was met with the explanation that the rights of an American citizen and the rights of high school students are not the same. So, they took an even bigger risk. After school they met at one student's house and the entire class dyed their hair a wonderful rainbow of florescent colors.

The Reward: When this group (representing the highest achieving students in the school) marched in the next day, there were too many students to suspend (and too many influential parents involved). Richard was allowed back in school and the students celebrated what they considered a triumph of their rights as free citizens and the potential power of social activism.

Neither of these risks was particularly "academic" and yet it would be difficult to argue that learning didn't take place in each example. While it's never a good idea to take risks that put students in danger, those that challenge their minds and encourage them to seek their own pathways for learning are undeniably valuable.

Ultimately, shouldn't learning that stretches one's mind, takes one to new places, and opens new doors - be exactly the kind of learning we're supposed to do in school?

Building Teamwork in Your School

Whether you're a teacher, student, principal, parent, or community member you can play a role in building community in your school. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

If you are a teacher:

• Start a Collaborative Learning Community: Share one of your lesson plans with a colleague and ask for advice on how to strengthen it. In the future this simple step can encourage her to do the same. Better yet, invite a few colleagues to review the lesson or visit your class and give you feedback. Your brave first move opens the door for them to try it too!
• Share Resources: If you're in grad school or taking an interesting class, make copies of articles you find interesting and share them with your principal. You might even want to post them in the teachers' lounge. You don't have to find these sources in classes alone. As you browse the web or look through resource books you might stumble upon something good to share. It's more than likely that what grabs your interest might grab someone else's too and once the sharing starts you won't have to spend so much time looking for good information on your own.
• Initiate a Skill Swap: There are things you know you do well with your students and there are things you know your peers do well. Consider orchestrating a skill swap! Ask one of your colleagues to model the skill you want to learn with your students and offer to do the same (modeling your skill) with theirs. (This might mean you have to combine your classes, or you could do it when one of you has a planning period.)

If you are a parent:

• Think Beyond Your Child: When you visit the school it's logical that you focus on what your child needs to be successful - but in fact his or her success depends largely on the success of lots of other people in the building. The next time you meet with your child's teacher consider asking, "Is there anything you need?" This simple question could bring a range of requests, and hopefully some of them (i.e. copy paper, an overhead projector, a field trip fund, markers) will be things you can get the parent organization (or even just the parents in this class) to fill. If several parents are asking this question of different teachers you might even find that a theme emerges that could help the parent organization to create a group solution. If you don't have a parent organization, you can solicit local businesses to donate the supplies or resources your school needs.
• Share the Good Things You See: If a particular teacher is doing something wonderful in his classroom, it's highly likely that you may be one of the first adults to notice it. Share the good news! Mention what you saw to the principal and other teachers. Sometimes parents have a broader view of the school (especially if they have students in multiple grades) than the teachers working there (who have to focus fully on their individual classes.)
• Contribute Your Talents: Do you know how to ballroom dance? Do you like reading books out loud? Can you sing? Can you talk about your line of work? Chances are good that you have something great to share with your child's school, talk to a teacher, principal, program coordinator, or specialist teacher about volunteering!

If you are a student:

• Start a Spirit Day: If you don't have one at your school already, talk to your teacher and the principal about starting a spirit day. Spirit days can be anything from days when everyone wears the school colors to days when the whole school does a service project. The purpose of these days is to create a sense of unity within the school and depending on your goals they can be very easy or very complex to arrange.
• Create a Student Feedback Box: True teamwork requires the voices of all people on the team to be heard. In a school, that means people should be listening to students. Unfortunately, students are often not invited to staff meetings, parent meetings, or board meetings where the big decisions are made. You can still share your voice by setting up a "feedback box" in the main lobby of your school where students can drop their ideas or concerns. These notes can be typed up and shared with the school staff during meetings. You might also sugget creating a student liason position where a student from the school attends these meetings on behalf of the student body and shares the comments left in the box.
• Be the Change: Model the behaviors that build teamwork by helping fellow students, and not just those in your grade. You can tutor younger students, start an after school club that's open to all grade levels, create intramural sports teams, etc.

If you are a principal:

• Seek Input from your Staff: You work in a particularly alienating profession but you don't always have to feel so alone! Use surveys, staff meetings, individual conferences, and team meetings to solicit advice and input from your staff - particularly as it relates to improving student achievement. You will find that your teachers have great ideas you've never tried and they'll be more invested in the implementation process knowing you asked their opinion first.
• Share Best Practices Research: One of the problems many principals face when trying to implement changes at their schools is that they fail to back up their requests with information explaining why they're being made. Teachers are smart and they like to be treated like they're smart. If you ask them to change the way they're teaching math they want to know why this approach will be better than what they've done before. You need to know this too! Share articles, bring in experts, and be open to their concerns and questions. These steps not only make the change more palatable - they also build trust!
• Make Time for Teamwork: Teamwork isn't something you can do without time to meet with the team. That's why it's so hard to build in a school! If you can build collaborative planning time into your schedule it is much easier for teachers to meet. Being creative with after school time (offering compensation if possible, providing food, providing material resources) can also make planning together "off the clock" more appealing. At Inspired Teaching we've found biannual all-staff retreats to be incredible community builders. We recommend taking teachers away from the buiding, overnight is preferable. We've found it's actually not impossible to get small grants to cover all the costs of such an event, contact us if you want to brainstorm ways to make it happen!

If you are a community member:

• Find Out what Your School Needs: Meet with the school's principal, a group of teachers, or parents to learn about the needs of the school. These may be primarily related to the physical building, but they may also be things like tutors, catered meals for meetings, typists, artists, etc. Find ways to use either your own or the community's resources to help meet those needs. You might even suggest a school-wide survey that students, parents, and staff take to identify needs. The data collected from the survey could be used to create a wish-list for the year.
• Organize a Community Clean-Up Day: Find out the physical needs of your school and organize a Saturday when the community can come in to meet them. Get paint donated from a local hardware store, have neighbors bring garden tools, distribute lots of trash bags, buckets of water, and rags - and start cleaning! This is a great project to do right before school starts so students come into a fresh building as the year begins.
• Tell Good Stories: You can do a lot for a school simply by talking it up. Find out what great things are happening at the school and talk about them with the community. Try to get a local paper interested, or see if neighborhood churches or businesses would like to recognize the school at their events. We hear so many bad things about our schools it's a wonder they have the courage to open their doors each day. A few more positive words can build the motivation to move towards higher and higher goals!