Leadership: Creatively Incorporating Community

Creative Thinking Forum: Improving Outreach and Collaboration with Families and Community

Today's VCET session was presented by Stephanie Dodman, sdodman@gmu.edu  Her topic was, What is "Teacher Leadership?" Our group spit into small groups. Karen Ciotta, a kindergarten teacher from Norfolk and I will be working together. A lesson concept we both gravitated to was, Domain VI: Improving Outreach and Collaboration with Families and Community, from the Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium, www.teacherleaderstandards.org . Through sharing ideas, we discovered our schools actively support community involvement - Colvin Run, through yearly Community Service Outreach Projects sponsored by each grade, and Karen's school, through Wake-up and Read! Our discussion goal was to brain-storm opportunities to integrate literature and fine arts in ways that would benifit our beginning reading population and build partnerships with local businesses. We considered further developing the Wake-up and Read! framework by including puppets and paint. The following Station/Center ideas formed:

• Puppet Center - children listen to/share in the presentation of stories using puppets. 
• Paint Center - children use paint or a variety of other media to render favorite character or a scene from the story. This center could also involve making story props, like princess crowns or knight's shields.
• Popcorn Center - this snack center could be popcorn, in keeping with our alliteration theme or another simple snack, possibly from a book, that children would create.

The event would occur on Saturday morning, either at the school or in a close venue so families could easily participate. It would be run by teacher and student volunteers and use materials contributed by the community.
 
Going Forward: One of the strengths of Colvin Run is the focus on strategic planning. This year we were introduced to the concept of the DeBono "Thinking Hats," which is a group discussion tool for examining ideas from differing perspectives. I have attached a link for further study and application.  http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php?gclid=CN6u0Jf0tr8CFTJn7AodREwA4A