Dear Colleagues:
What do Post-It Notes and Gmail have in common? Both products were invented during a time that 3M and Google set aside for employees to follow their passions during the workday. On their ‘time off,’ employees of 3M developed many of their 22,000 patents, and Googlers came up with other lucrative products such as AdSense and Hangouts.
On March 1, the day when schools will be closed for the presidential primaries, we’ve declared a My Choice ACPS day for all students. We’re encouraging students, while they are at home, to choose a challenge or problem to solve, an idea to explore, or a dream to turn into reality as part of an independent learning experience for that day.
In the spirit of our Seven Pathways to Lifelong Learning, we need your help in encouraging students to select a one-day project and sharing their learning with their peers when they return to school. We hope you will take a moment to encourage students to participate in #mychoiceACPS through social media and school announcements leading up to March 1.
In addition to hearing from you about stories students share when they return to school, we will be monitoring social media for #mychoiceACPS to see examples of how students chose to spend their day off. We’re going to ask these students to join us at the April 10 School Board meeting to share their success with the members of our Board.
Lifelong Learning Competency 12 is about the value of “applying habits of mind and metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate one’s own work.” It’s a perfect fit for an activity we would like to see become just as important a part of our culture as the passion projects that came from 3M and Google.
Thank you for being a part of this exciting new idea.
Sincerely,
Matt
Matthew S. Haas, Ed.D.
Deputy Superintendent