A Mini Guide to Working With Businesses In The Community
Elementary Schools benefit greatly when they are connected to community businesses. The business partnership works directly to connect school subject content areas to practical application. Students are learning about the community company, while is helps with their individual financial, economic, and digital literacy. A deliberate effort must be made on both sides to ensure the success when formalizing this partnership. In my experience, Elementary Schools try to partner with businesses too late. We tend to think about involving the community after the project has already been created. That is not how it works, each party must begin the project together to come up with individual needs and opportunities that will benefit both parties. Prior to our meeting, our team had to make sure we understood why we wanted this partnership in the first place. Our team had to be on the same page!
Brainstorming
Our elementary school came up 2-3 ideas, we started with our improvement plan which was on student achievement. Clarity between our team was key, we wanted to make sure that once we left that table our deliverables were manageable and we weren’t overwhelmed by the project and its deliverables.
Which Businesses
After our K12 team came up with our list, we next had to brainstorm potential partnerships. Who were we going to reach out to? In our case it was a mixture of for-profit, government, and local city groups. Although we were able to contact a couple of people and connect with one. I was able to reach out to a couple of my friends and we were able to bring people who worked for Google to our campus to talk to students about potential opportunities, perks, and the growth of technology. Luckily, someone knew him and so our school only had to pay for his flight and hotel. He was the only one out of state but that was one of our biggest successes. The presentation was videoed, the whole school brought their class to the gym, and parents showed up to hear him speak as well. After various calls, denials, and frustrations. The local community center said, “Yes, they were our partner for over 4 years. The community center shared some things they were looking for and together we created a plan to have students volunteer their time for several projects. After a contract was made we set up partnership planning activities and included a team that would support the project all the way through until the end of the year.
Student Mistakes
Many times when you involve students and the community things are messy and for our students messing up is a part of the learning process. Make sure the community partner knows and understands the policy around these concerns ahead of time. We had several students that when to participate in the project and either didn’t do the work or took this opportunity for granted. I’m glad we had discussed this in the planning stages because we already knew the procedure and next steps to replace the student to make sure the project continues.
Evaluation
Once the project ended, the evaluation process began. One year, our feedback forms and evaluations from our community partner had nothing to do with our goals. Also during the year, we changed our project about 4 or 5 times to get it right but once we had all the pieces moving together, the project became the staple of our existence. Our students still come back to this day and talk about their experiences, the people they met, and how connected they feel to their community.
Resources:
Partnership Planning Process: http://www.sowashco.org/files/community/partnerships/Toolkit.pdf
Broadening the Base: School/Community Partnerships Serving Language Minority Students at Risk