It has been weeks now since I travelled to Ann Arbor, Michigan for Picademy. On my three hour drive home I thought of various ways to utilize my Raspberry Pi at school. One idea I came up with was a photo booth for the start of school. A Raspberry Pi photo booth isn’t a new idea. But my implementation of the photo booth might be a new. Isn’t that what we do as teachers? We take the ideas of others, and repurpose and modify them to use in our classrooms and schools for our kids. That’s what I did.
In my district we have something called open enrollment. For those who are not familiar with open enrollment, this allows students from a neighboring district to attend my school instead of their home district. Open enrollment can bring about a lack of school pride since the students do not live in the district. To work toward building school pride, I built my photo booth to tweet pictures with the hashtag #ProudToBeASpringfieldSpartan. Students can then search #ProudToBeASpringfieldSpartan and see everyone showing school spirit.
Having grown up and attended the district where I teach, school spirit is important to me. Even though I no longer live in the district and my daughters don’t attend the school, I am still #ProudToBeASpringfieldSpartan. Once a Spartan always a Spartan. I want my daughters to be proud of their school like I am of mine.
So I made the photo booth available for the teachers and then for our 7th graders during their orientation. The students were a bit more apprehensive, but I think the message was heard loud and clear. That’s my mantra for the year. #ProudToBeASpringfieldSpartan! I want us all to be excited about who and what we are and the opportunities right in front of us.
I can’t wait to see the continued excitement and school spirit. #ProudToBeASpringfieldSpartan