Parents from Ashland's John Muir School collaborate with DCJ's Steve Rice to learn web site skills.
This photo is a snap from a recent DCJ – John Muir School work session at DCJ world headquarters. The school’s original site was build by DCJ boss Steve Rice who, in turn, taught parents how to add new articles and update the site from time to time. As kids grow up and move on so do their parents, so occasionally teaching a new group of intrepid folks is called for. Watching these new recruits in a mini workshop with Steve reminded me that the story of how Dotcomjungle came to build and host the John Muir site gratis is one worth sharing. Here are my notes from an impromptu interview with Steve about how it happened. ~ MLP
The first year of the John Muir School a group of parents formed the Parent Teacher Collective (PTC). They were meeting to discuss school activities, fund raisers, how to support the teaching staff and the students, and make plans for the year. Right away there was a lot of understandable and well-intentioned arguing about what the purpose of the PTC was and exactly what they would be doing — because the mission and purpose of the school had been established, but there was nothing in place for the PTC.
Finally, because these misunderstandings kept cropping up, Steve organically helped facilitate a miniature branding process for the PTC. They split into groups, wrote on large sheets of paper, and shared ideas, etc. People wrote about what they thought the core purpose of the PTC “should be” according to what they felt strongly about and their hopes for the school. When they finished the exercise and looked around the room at the 6 or 7 sheets of paper, they discovered that the ideas and sentiments looked very similar. The parents quickly migrated from the fear that they couldn’t agree on anything, to realizing that they actually agreed on a lot, and more importantly, that they agreed on the main purpose of the PTC.
That was a major trust building exercise.
From that point, with the trust they built on that first exercise, the PTC was able to split into small groups again and establish a Core Values Platform – a document that would state publicly what their core values were (in only 3 words), define what those values meant, then establish a set of tenets (‘We believe…’ statements), along with a set of actions that could be, by consensus, agreed upon as fitting the tenets and core values. The three core values agreed upon? Community, Stewardship, and Sustainability. Lastly, after these guidelines were established, the group was able to revisit the document as a whole and formulate a mission statement.
While the brand building process helped establish community for the PTC, it also gave everyone actions to build on and set the tone for future members.
The web site came out of this process because the John Muir School PTC needed to communicate with parents via the internet as well as wanted the PTC to convey things that the school district couldn’t. Personally, Steve felt that the John Muir School was important enough for his own children to go to and therefore important enough to educate the community as to the nature of the school and what was and is going on there. He envisioned the web site as a national marketing tool for the school, a way to foster support for the school and the important educational styles and opportunities they are offering.
Currently, the site functions beautifully as an information outpost for its visitors. Newsletters, meeting minutes, announcements and calendar events are easy to access and download as needed. As the newest parent web site workers are recruited and trained, new changes will occur to the site. In the case of the John Muir School’s site, the changes will be positive —as photos of kids and their activities will be featured more regularly as well as exciting written and visual chronicles of both the natural science and arts experiential adventures that the school shares with its students. Keep visiting www.thejohnmuirschool.com and watch learning build community!
Tags: Acts of Kindness, Ashland, Branding, Building Sites that Kick Butt!, John Muir School, Thought Leader, Values