Monday, April 1, 2013

Want to strengthen family & community engagement in your #school? Try a flashmob!

Looking for a way to strengthen the family and community engagement at your school? Take a page from the book of PS 10 in Brooklyn, New York.  At a Citywide professional development event where I was discussing using social media to connect and coordinate with families, Parent Coordinator Madeline Seide shared with me the amazing success her school had.


Parent Kristi Spessard, who has a background in choreography worked with families and school staff to organize a huge flashmob on the school playground early one morning as students were lining up for class.  The event was video taped by several members of the school community including Joshua Berger, Benton Collins, John Hennegan, Daniel Koehler, and Mark Rattelle then edited by Benton Collins.



From there the social media fest began!

The video was posted on Vimeo.
P.S.10 Flash Mob 6-19-2012 (Official) from Benton Collins on Vimeo.

Then Tweeted by the school's tech coach and retweeted on the school’s Twitter account.


It was shared on the school Facebook page.
It was pinned on Pinterest

And exploded in the papers!

The ability to come together to bring so much joy and happiness filled the school community and staff with excitement. The feeling of pride was contagious and others wanted to be a part of it. Parents from near and far started contacting the school to find out about sending their children there. 

And that is the power of social media. It is the ability to take a short and wonderful moment in time and share it near and far with the world to make lives and make the community a better place for all.

2 comments:

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  2. This is such an interesting idea! I never would have thought that a flashmob could be utilized by a school to build community. I couldn't tell if this was the case in the video, but if there was a way to get parents involved in the mob as well, that would be even more community building. For instance, my university community filmed a huge Harlem Shake video, but it would have been more of a bonding experience had staff and administration shown an interest in doing something of this nature with the students.

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