GBN's Marketing Class to partner with the SAP team

The Student Assistance Program (SAP) at Glenbrook North High School is invested in the prevention, intervention, and support in all areas of a student’s social-emotional development.  The SAP Team represents faculty members across the disciplines found within Glenbrook North High School.  So with my passion of social emotional learning and my teaching and real-world experience in marketing, I fit well on the SAP Team.

In the 2012-2013 school year we worked on developing parent workshops (Understanding Adolescents and the Impact of a Digital Footprint) along with supporting other initiatives for students such as the "Potty Mouth," a publication that displays in the restrooms and promotes healthy living and resources.

So in the Spring semester, I had my marketing class brainstorm a public relations campaign for bullying prevention. What amazed me was the ideas and themes that came out of this activity included ideas that fit with the social emotional goals we had on the SAP team.  My marketing students thought that there needed to be more opportunities to create connections between teachers and students and between their peers.  Marketing students also felt that videos or Youtube videos are a great communication tool to reach their millenium generation.  Finally, students felt that their needed to be more marketing on resources that Glenbrook North (GBN) already has but the students aren't aware enough.  I brought a huge brainstorming list back to the SAP and the faculty members all agreed that the SAP team needed to do more marketing.  However, with our limited time as teachers, we are only able to get so much done on our own.  We need to expand our resources for help with marketing and what a perfect fit with me, a marketing teacher, being on the SAP team.

Each semester I partner with a local business and invite them into my classroom as our "client." They share their marketing objectives and budget and then we bring them back in at the end of the semester to present recommended marketing strategies.  For the 2013-2014 year, I'm excited to announce that the GBN Marketing Class will partner with the SAP team to not only present strategies but to also execute the marketing initiatives within the school.  The marketing class will not only gain valuable experience but they will be helping their peers, the teachers and improving their school culture.

Look out for updates though out the school year on the marketing initiatives of the SAP team!  In the meantime, please refer to the Glenbrook North's Student Assistance Program page.

Management & Leadership Class at GBN

Management & Leadership is a fun, life skills class suitable for all types of students whether they are interested in going into business, interested in improving leadership skills or just want to be inspired to live a more fulfilling life!  This class focuses on three core areas.

A Leadership Impact Project that continued for two years
to donate guitars to Glenwood Elementary in Waukegan, IL 

Managing yourself: time management, being

proactive, and goal setting.

Management functions: planning, organizing,

directing and controlling.

Leadership: how to motivate and inspire.

Students will study the traits of an effective

leader and work in collaborative team projects

to gain hands-on experience investigating how

to be a leader in the community.

The Leadership Impact Projects have been a huge success over the last several semesters.  The project begins with the entire class brainstorming about ways they can have an impact on their community or society as leaders.  A list is created of potential realistic projects and students choose to be on a project team that inspires them the most.  In the Spring 2013 class, students helped local cancer patients, collected book donations for Glenwood Elementary (a school in a low income community), raised depression awareness, collected used sporting equipment for charity, and raised awareness about concussions.  A big emphasizes on this project is about the management functions mentioned above.  Before executing the project, students developed a plan and present it to the entire class to receive feedback for revision.  Check out posts from April 2013 on this blog to see the proposals for each of the projects from this year.  

The Leadership Impact Projects give students' a tremendous opportunity to apply the skills they learn in this course.  Skills and topics include: 

Students working together to lift their teacher over a wall.

• Communication Skills
• Problem Solving Skills
• Management Philosophies
• Group Dynamics & Team Building
• Emotional Intelligence
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens

The other experiential learning opportunities in this class comes from team building activities and reflection.  Team building opportunities provide a valuable hands-on learning opportunity to solve projects and to collaborate with their peers.  Students then reflect introspectively and with each other to discuss how they think and feel as they create their own leadership style.

For more information about the course:

Contact Mindy Ingersoll at Glenbrook North High School in the Career and Life Skills Department.

FEARS VS. DREAMS VIDEO

FEARS VS. DREAMS

DURING ALL LUNCHES

Annie, Alex, Lisa, Mark
RAISING AWARENESS:
TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS

Our big idea for our Leadership Impact Project was to raise depression awareness with the organization, To Write Love On Her Arms.  By spreading awareness we had students fill out a poster with their fears and dreams in the SAC.  We also had posters hung up of others' fears and dreams that were from the organization's website.  Our challenge was to get students involved in the activity, and at the same time have fun dancing to our music.  Our leadership project benefited both the GBN community and the non-profit organization, To Write Love On Her Arms. It brought the Spartan society together for a fantastic cause.

CLICK TO WATCH OUR VIDEO!

Spartans Crush Cancer Video

Helping Cancer Patients in Our Community

Hello Spartans! Many of us wonder how it is that we can help the people right in our community. It is a wonderful opportunity to help people that need it the most when you choose this group. Brandon, Dylan, and I (Adam) have decided to help the strongest Spartans in the community to stay strong by raising money to purchase baskets and other goods that the patients at our local Glenbrook Hospital's Kellogg Cancer Center. We want to help them by giving them what they request in their fight to stay strong. Watch the video below to learn more about how you can pave a path of kindness for those in the classes to follow. 

Recommendations for doing a Baggo tournament in the future:

-You need to create an interest in the tournament. Create flyers to hand out, posters to put up around the school, and use social media websites to directly contact GBN students. You need to create a buzz around the tournament in order to get people to sign up.

-Create an organized method of signing people up for the tournament. Try contacting someone about using the ticket booth in the SAC to sign up kids during lunch or other free times. You can also directly ask students to sign up by walking around with a signup sheet during any of your free times.

-Have an organized sign up for when students will play. You need to get two teams to agree on one time slot in order to schedule a game. Ask students that sign up what available times they have throughout the day to play. Once you can match them with another team, contact them with the  time slot that you will assign them. Assign teams to play each other based on when they are available to play.

-Have students pay ahead of time for the tournament. It may be great if you get someones name down to play, but there’s no guarantee that they will actually show up to play on the tournament date.

-Offer an incentive to get students to play. Try contacting local businesses for donations, things such as gift cards that could be given to the winners of the tournament. Be creative with this and choose an incentive that is appealing to students and will get them motivated to play. After all, this is a tournament and students will be expecting to be able to win something.

With this, keep in mind that it is not as easy as it seems to get students to participate. While many students may like the idea of a baggo tournament, a majority of them will not be willing to give up their free time to participate, or they will not want to pay to play in the tournament. We found it difficult to get students to sign up, even though many thought it sounded like a cool and fun idea. For this reason, we wouldn’t recommend the baggo tournament to you guys. Once we found out that students weren’t actually interested in participating in the tournament, our project started to fall apart. It’s important to choose a project that excites students, and a baggo tournament did not do that.

Kellogg Cancer Center Entrance

Dylan Marx (left) and Adam Goldberg (right) holding our new baskets

Brandon Isaacs holding baskets as we deliver them to  the hospital

Glenwood Book Donation

For our leadership project, we donated books to Glenwood Elementary School in Waukegan, IL. We kick started our project from "Book Buddies", who did a project last year. Here is their video explaining their project.

We documented our progress in pictures and videos, and we were very successful in our doings. This video helps explain our techniques we used, so future groups can hopefully carry on with this project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuT6bmtcLI0&feature=youtu.be

Concussion Awareness Community Impact Project

By: John, Frankie, Dylan, and Matthias

In this Community Impact Project, our group tried to raise awareness about the danger and prevalence of concussions in our school community so as to help protect our fellow students. To do so, we ended up putting up posters and trying to spread the word about helpful information. I hope the information provided in the video will help future groups carry on the cause in the years to come!

Used Sporting Equipment Drive Video

2013 Leadership Impact Project!

Many students at Glenbrook North have the opportunity to compete in one, two, or even three organized sports each year of high school. Not everyone is as lucky as we are, and because of this we centered our project around providing the equipment for kids to enjoy sports. Jake, Josh, and myself (Cameron) organized a used sporting equipment, in conjunction with the Village of Northbrook, both in and out of school in order to accomplish this goal. The following video explains our project in greater depth and hopefully inspires you to continue with your own used sporting equipment drive!