Improve Public Relations for Public Educators

Educational Process: Sell it

 Friday, March 4, 2011 at 4:29pm

 

¿Qué tal,  My Fellow Educators?

Glee is changing the image of what goes on in our schools creatively, and yet public education in our backyard limps along in the public eye.  Though perhaps not completely off-base is blaming NCLB,  implying lack of progress (lies)and concluding that the system (teachers) don’t work.  I think it is our perceptions that don’t work.  I think it is our expectations that don’t work.  Though Einstein flunked out of school, he was actually a genius.  Perceptions and expectations of him were mistaken.  The bar being raised year after year for schools to meet AYP is also an impossibility.  Perceptions and expectations are still mucking up the scenery, nixing the educational process with it.   This is a battle cry.  How can our educational system work when no one trusts the process?

What if we created a media campaign that showed how it works?  It is important to see the educational process as creative, ever-changing and distinctly personal.   Because I know that you are also concerned about the future of the teaching profession and public education, this summer I want to make a plan out of an idea that we could carry out all over the district, no matter where we are.

Together, I want us to form an advertising/media template that schools could use to get kids connected with educational synchronicity.  This template could be used in any class.  Call it the Publish section of the class.  I imagine a sort of super arterial between the jobs in the Las Vegas area and the skills taught in school.  These ads would clearly be presented in a fast-paced, fun, entertaining way.  By definition, the ads might be super highways from our schools to global economy jobs, community jobs, technical jobs…  With nurturing, these creative, mind-grabbing snippets retain Super-Bowl-Commercial impact.

Investors and television media executives could produce media ads that generate this positive view of Vegas public school teachers.  They could count it as a charitable donation and an investment in their company’s future.   I dream that this starts in Vegas and works its way OUT to a national level... like PS 22.  Are you willing to bring your brains to the table on a visual media template that could be used easily by any of us?

I visualize the reverse of a smear campaign...  Our goal:  Show what public education could look like in an achievable, reality-based scenario.  The digital advertisements will delineate what WE, the teachers and students, WANT learning to look like.  It is possible that learning ALREADY looks just like the process that it is.  The effect:  improved attitudes about education in general.

How to begin?  I might have already answered my own question... Start in our schools with connections to Vegas franchises, networks, casinos...   The public relations office of each might be helpful.

We CAN do something about the mistaken perception of education if we get out of the BOX.  With concrete community connection, positive, mind-grabbing media influence, ANYTHING is possible.  When something good is going on in a class... wherever that class is being held, it could be valued through our most influential digital medias: Internet and TV, but produced appropriately so that it doesn’t run like the Blood-Borne Pathogens video.  Consistently uploading to You Tube might be just the ticket.  What might that look like?  It cannot be dull.  It must capture the excitement of new learning, showing the tough times and the triumphant moments as well.

This is only the beginning.  We are going to SHOW what teachers and students do in a meaningful way.  In application, we will access movie makers, believers, and roll-up-your sleeves do-gooders.   You probably already have connections.  Who are they?  How can they be reached?  How can they get us on the air?   In order to get our hope for public education out there, we will need investors who back Nevada Education.   The bottom line: How do we use media to shift the attitude of a nation regarding public education?  Or even:  How do we shift the attitude of the nation, regarding education in general?

Would you like to help put the intentional, focused media template together for a few days this summer?   Do you have another idea?  I would love to hear it.  Have a wonderful Spring Break.  It is coming!
Yours Truly