It Takes a Village

Blogging Challenge Day 23: 

Write about one way that you “meaningfully” involve the community in the learning in your classroom.  If you don’t yet do so, discuss one way you could get started?

Jamie-Early in my career, my teaching partner and I would have volunteers come into the classroom to help us conference with our students about their independent reading.  In the past I have also had parent volunteers come into the classroom to help me with the revision and editing process for student writing.  Since my move to seventh grade a couple of years ago, I have not really thought about parent/community involvement in my classroom.  So, today’s blogging prompt has my wheels spinning.  I am thinking it would be very cool if I could get parents or people from the community to come in to share their favorite book(s) from their childhood and/or have people share how they use reading in their daily lives/jobs.  I think it is important for students to see the value of reading outside of school in the real world.  I'd also like  to try sponsoring a literacy night at my school.  It would be a fun way to celebrate reading.
Meg-I am reading today's question with a little guilt because I, like Jamie, do need to make more of an effort to involve the community in my classroom.  I have spoken to two parents about speaking with my class about how they use math as a part of their careers (an engineer and an accountant), but I have not yet scheduled a specific date/time for any of this to occur.  I also think it would be wonderful for my math class, or really any math class at our school, to be responsible for the financial component to our school's annual H2O for Life campaign.  Currently, there is a small committee of students led by a teacher who count the money and set fundraising goals.  The more I think about it, though, that really would be a perfect task for my math classes.  It will make my students more invested in the importance of service our school is striving reinforce while also providing them with some opportunities to utilize their math skills for an authentic purpose.  I am motivated--let's make this happen!