If you follow Heather over at river&bridge, you must have seen her mention our email exchanges. I try to keep my emails short and sweet, but she's one of the lucky ones that gets my long-winded emails full of back stories, unrelated topics, and tangents. I'm trying to find the right words to explain how this idea came about, but I think this excerpt from our first email exchange about this project is a pretty good start:
"Girl Scouts get badges, military gets pins, athletes get letters and trophies, and students get report cards. It's completely unfair. Students work so hard, and although some teachers are great at sending home positive notes and awards, they're usually hung on the fridge for a week and then stashed away. I'm on a mission to get kids to be as proud of their academic accomplishments as they are their athletic accomplishments. I'm making pennants that students can hang on their walls and 1.5" buttons that they can earn and add to their pennant."
So there you have it! It's so important to recognize REAL student achievement. No, I'm not talking about the "everyone gets a trophy for participating" kind of achievement. Students sometimes fail, students sometimes achieve without putting forth their best effort, and students put their heart and soul into their work every now and again. It's fantastic to hang their spelling test or their science unit test on the fridge for all to see, but they're usually taken down a week later, and students can easily forget about it as they're studying for, or working on, their next project.
I sent Heather my list, and she made us some pretty sweet designs. Before I order all of the parts, I'm offering our pennant and button sets to you at a presale price of $35 until 9pm on Monday, September 1st. The price will go back up to $42 after the first, and we will have limited quantities available, so if you want your very own, get those orders in!
Each set includes:
16"x12" pennant with hanging hardware
35 1.5" praise pins (choose primary K-5 or secondary 6-12)
1 Kids Under Construction pin
If you're looking for a way to encourage your students at home, THIS is it!
