Rae Hughart shares ways you can involve your community in learning.

Hey guys! It’s Rae. I wanted to do a quick video today on small ways to involve your community in learning. Now as you know, I do big internships that my students take on to learn their content, and that is a great way to involve your community, however a lot of teachers are looking for just small ways to get their foot in the door, and how to involve their community in their students’ learning, and I want to touch on just a few.

The first one I want to tell you is lobster bibs. Sounds weird, right? So there is an organization in our town that gives lobster bibs when you order lobster at their restaurant. Well perfect, because when I do a fraction activity with pie in the face, it’s actually something that we need some sort of coverage of our students’ clothing with, so we reach out to that restaurant and we ask them, “Can we use your lobster bibs?” Now it sounds a little goofy because they’re just plastic bibs with a huge lobster on the front, but as we do our pie in the face, it has nothing to do with lobster, I totally understand that, but as my students are practicing In this fun way, how do you solve fractions, having a community support us by giving us babes is a huge benefit and a resource that then I don’t have to spend money out of my pocket to get. So we have this goofy little day where we talk about pie, and we have lobster bibs, and it’s just a joke of the day, and that really allows my community to support not only my classroom, but support my students learning.

Another example of how my community gets involves is, I just had a community member asking me if I needed anything for my classroom, and I told her I really need a pencil cases. My students lose pencils like crazy and as a matter teacher, they have to have their pencils for class, and she went out of her way and put together pencil cases for my students, now she went above and beyond in that, but what she did it she went to the local fabric company in town, and she asked if they had scraps, and so she put those crafts together, but as a teacher, and as having students who are skilled in sewing are gluing, we could be utilizing scraps, and a business to really help us in our learning.

So if we went and collected those scraps, and then we were able to make pencil cases out of it, then that is a great way to utilize your community, now businesses all the time, have their own equivalent of what scraps are, it might be pens that are half used, or markers but this is the exact way to reach out to our community and bring that and education. You know what they say, what someone else’s trash is is someone else’s treasure, and I feel like that’s education sometimes, we have limited resources, so anyway that a business could help us out, or a community member can help us out is super appreciated.

I hope that you take one of these ideas and run with it, the community is a fabulous resource to use when you’re in your classroom and it can be used anywhere to just enhance your students learning. Go pick up a menu from a restaurant, go do something to bring your community in, and a very small way so it better is your lesson. Good luck.