'I
intend to be a public relations machine'
By Lee Bromberger
Mukwonago High School
It is time for teachers to become proactive. I have thought a lot about
this lately and have concluded that each of us has access to an immediate
audience that can sort fact from fiction: our students, their parents,
our school communities. We all learned early in our careers that sophistry
does not satisfy this demanding audience.
I intend to be a public relations machine for my classes and my programs
this year, with all information based solely on truth. I have communication
vehicles easily available for the dissemination of my truths. To be concrete,
I plan the following:
- All of my students will receive quarterly progress reports, as well
as informal computer-generated grade updates.
- I will call parents with good news reports, and not use the phone
as a bad-news medium only.
- I will send home a monthly newsletter to all my parents, informing
them of special class activities, lessons, and updates to the course
syllabus.
- I will post my daily after-school schedule, so that students and parents
will know where to find me.
- I will issue press releases to local papers, notifying them of the
accomplishments of students who have directly benefitted and succeeded
from my department’s English classes. I will proudly proclaim my
district’s rising ACT scores, the tremendous successes of honors
students passing the AP English exams, those who have gained college
scholarships via writing contests, etc.
- I will prepare writing folders for all my students and be sure to
share those with parents at conference, my district’s curriculum
director, and my superintendent. I want everyone to have first-hand
knowledge that my classroom is one in which writing is stressed and
students are tangibly rewarded for their writing efforts.
- I will become politically active.
Now, if you, my colleagues, employ one or two of these efforts, imagine
the fruits of that labor! What better way to fight the insidious tactics
of our political opponents. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our students’
parents heard the education rhetoric of politicians, and could respond:
“Not in my district!” To what depths would the polemics of education
opponents plunge if they found themselves stymied by these efforts?
Posted March 3, 1997
