Dean Shareski recently shared a post where he has a compelling video that talks about his “year in numbers” (inspired by this Dan Meyer post), where he has compiled some information about 2012. (I made the video!)
Many schools say that too many people focus on “test scores”, yet how often do we share (in engaging ways), the stats that are really important to many of our community. Wouldn’t a video like this for a school year, or broken up into semesters and terms, share some REALLY important stats that many miss out on that goes beyond showing our kids as “test scores”?
For example, how much has your school raised to serve others? How many hours of coaching and practice have happened? How many hour have been spent doing musicals or plays (in Canada, these are most often voluntary hours)? What is your school doing to lead in your community?
The thing that I want to be careful of though is that schools aren’t necessarily sharing stats like, “How many books we have read?” and then forcing kids to read for “numbers” as opposed to interest. But with that being said, wouldn’t this be a cool project for schools to take on? I know that many schools share a lot of evidence through a large document, but I think that there is a certain appeal to creating a video.
This is something that shares YOUR story and doesn’t allow for the narrative of your school to be told by others or be determined only by test scores.
What do you think? What questions or data could you compile that would show what your school does that people need to know about? Any schools out there interested in doing something like this or have already?
