Creating a Unifying Classroom Brand: elementary version(Remarkable Chatter Special Edition)

img_1747I am lucky to count Ann King, a 3rd grade teacher and literacy coach extraordinaire from the grand state of Indiana, as a friend of mine. Check out her blog. Our mutual friend and her school colleague, Ryan Stroud introduced us face-to-face a couple years ago while I was working in Indiana and I always love to see and hear what they have going on in the hallowed halls of their Indianapolis school.
So the opportunity happened that Ann was in Kansas, visiting her sister, Rachel, (@rbharder) who is a 4th grade teacher in the nearby town of Hesston, Kansas. And right about that same time, the following picture came across Twitter:
 This list was created/compiled by Andrew Steinman (@steinman), EdTech Consultant for Kent ISD in Michigan and Gary G Abud, Jr (@MR_ABUD), 2014 Michigan Teacher of the Year.
Ann and I love to get our heads together to wrestle with all sorts of ideas and this was a good one. We felt that, based on our experiences with class identity, there was truth in the branding advice. But we also wondered if we’d actually follow the above protocol. Maybe there’s a better way?
And of course, we found ourselves adding to, and adjusting, the original list.
Ann plans to tackle the intentionality of classroom identity next August with her 3rd graders. I plan to follow along to see how this plays out at the lower elementary level. I can’t wait to see!
Take a listen to our conversation to see what we’d shift, adjust, add, or toss!
Thanks for your help in thinking this through, Ann! And thank you to Andrew Steinman and Gary G. Abud, Jr for posting their original thoughts and experiences.
Oh, and for fun, here’s a picture of Ann doing her very first podcast ever!
Ginger Lewman, PBL
  Ginger provides dynamic and hands-on learning for those interested in providing engaging professional learning opportunities for teachers, administrators, parents, and communities. You can get the flavor of Ginger’s Project Based Learning by heading over to her blog LifePractice Learning.
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