At Midway High School in Waco, TX students in Jamie Beavers’ Newspaper class profiled all CTE teachers for February’s CTE month. For this initiative, each student was assigned two CTE teachers/staff members. They photographed and interviewed them, then placed their projects into a shared Google Slide file using their school-issued iPads. Using Class Intercom, the students were involved in posting at least one teacher profile every weekday of school to the campus Instagram and Facebook accounts. They made the decision to exclude Twitter posts because of character limits. Critical thinking was used during the interview assignment. Students researched their teachers, generated questions, and processed answers. They also chose proper photos for each post. Students in Jenny Kolb’s Graphic Design classes created several CTE month graphics that were paired with the Newspaper students’ posts.
What makes this project more creative than others is the collaboration between the two classes of students and the two teachers. Several other departments have since expressed interest in doing collaborative projects where their info would be posted by the Newspaper students. Students have been encouraged by their success on this project to take on more assignments.
In addition to this CTE project, Jamie Beavers is the leading teacher content creator on the Class Intercom platform for the district. She also creates the weekly Parent and Student Email Newsletter sent out by the principal that includes the upcoming week’s calendar, student and staff highlights/awards, and content created by students. For example, this week’s newsletter includes a press release written by the JROTC student media rep about ROTC activities.
Beavers uses Class Intercom, School Messenger, Blackboard’s website manager, Canva, and many other programs to remain connected to students and their families. Since she started working with Class Intercom in 2019, social media traffic and engagements for the school have increased across all social media platforms. Also, as the adviser for Yearbook and Newspaper classes, she appoints two or more students each year to serve as staff social media managers and has lessons on etiquette and rules for posting. Traffic on the staff sites has increased each year for student-run social media sites as well.
Check out the initiative here: https://www.facebook.com/MidwayHighSchool
