Schools and organizations are infinitely more successful when talented individuals are enabled and empowered to use their unique talents and strengths to achieve a shared mission and vision. Recently I was approached by one of our outstanding teachers who had an idea. Being a tech savvy, creative, and outgoing teacher, he saw an opportunity to teach his students how use technology to share a message that mattered, the message that bullying is destructive, hurtful, and not welcome by students at Cashton. The idea, create a lip dub that promoted our vision and value of being a "bully free" school. (A lip dub is a type of video that combines lip synching and audio dubbing to make a music video. It is made by filming individuals or a group of people lip synching while listening to a song or any recorded audio then dubbing over it in post editing with the original audio of the song. -thanks Wikipedia) As soon as he finished explaining to me what a lip dub was, and I heard his enthusiasm as he shared the plan, I knew the project had merit and would be a great learning experience for kids no matter how the actual project turned out. At worst, students would learn another use of the abundant technology tools in the district and reaffirm their beliefs that bullying is not part of who we want to be. Today I saw the end product, and I couldn't be more proud of what he, with the support of his excellent and supportive colleagues and a top-notch group of third graders, was able to teach and create even as the school year comes to a close. Nice work, Mr. Brown!
(Wondering about the T-shirts...they were created by students in the high school innovations lab learning valuable job skills. The text is not quite clear in the video, but the message is still strong..."Hey bully, Who do you think you are?")
