Only 20-30% of our communities are made up of households with students in our buildings. Those percentages reflect the huge void of people in the community who have any knowledge of what goes on in your school building. Telling the story of the wonderful things happening in schools to the kids who see it all the time  is simply not enough. (Sinanis and Sanfelippo 7)

Who is telling the story of your school?

In their book, The Power of Branding: Telling Your School’s Story, Tony Sinanis (@Tony Sinanis) and Joseph Sanfelippo (@Joesanfelippofc) share their strategies for building a positive school brand using social media. They view social media as a tool for shifting the culture of a school, connecting with the school community and empowering both educator and student voice. (see my blog post review here) Today I had the opportunity to be part of a powerful shift in leadership at my former school and the school I work out of:Lake Superior High School (@LakeSuperiorHS).

This release of control over the school Twitter account demonstrates a huge shift in the thinking that is occurring at this school. The administrator, Heidi patterson (@hepatter) has taken a rare leap in empowering all staff with access to the school’s Twitter account. Not only is this step practical as it eliminates the principal from the responsibility of capturing all the learning, successes and joy that occur in a school, it ensures that the whole voice of #LSHS is captured. Now that staff have access to the account, they can share their stories and provide a platform for student voice while helping to strengthen our communication with the school community. As of today, the educators at #LSHS will rely less on “hope” that their stories get shared!

The work that is done in classrooms, hallways, gyms and auditoriums is often only shared with a select few. We hope for our kids to go home and tell the story of their school. We hope our families run into our teachers outside of school to have conversations about what happens in our schools. We hope a lot and hope is good, but the power of storytelling can’t be left to hope. We need to promote the narrative that drives the great stories of our kids.(Sinanis and Sanfelippo 26)

Awesome things are going on in our classrooms, in our clubs and on our teams every day. Does your school community know about these wonderful events? We trust educators in our classrooms every day. What message are we sending by not trusting them to share in the communication opportunities via school social media?

Follow @LakeSuperiorHS and learn from all its voices!