Scholar Pin

Fairly easy.

#1. Have a good record at school. This varies with the child.

#2. Take part in a school activity or service. Things you could use include: lunchtime/recess walkathons, class litter pickups on playground; canned goods drives; dime drive for a transplant patient; collecting food labels for school; after school clubs - art, Spanish, chess, drama; L.A.Y.A sports; Math Night; Young Authors Conference; Science Fair, Holiday Choir, etc..

#3. Discuss with your teacher or principal the value of an education. At the fall parent-teacher conference all the 4th graders had made posters and essays about this that were hung in the hall. Send a note or talk to the teacher ahead of time, then take the handbook to conference and get it signed, or send it into school with your child.

#4. List in writing things you can do because you are going to school. See the handbook.

#5. Learn about the history of schools. See the handbook or a library book. As an add-on, if you get a chance to go into Lowden 1-Room School, do it. Also look at the old pictures in the hallways of Brick School. The Lincoln Seniors group has people who talk about going to Lincoln school many years ago. Friends of Lowden School (contact the Seniors or Brick School) keeps pictures and memoirs of people who went to the old schools in the district.

#6. Make a chart showing how your school system is run. See the handbook.

#7. Ask your parents and 5 other adults what are the best things and worst problems at your school. Check those publications that come in the mail from the school for current hot topics if you can't think of anything else to say to the child.

#8. List and explain some full-time positions in education. Check the library reference section for careers in education. Many kids are turned off by "teaching," so expand it to people who teach outside school. Talk about people who: run building trades and apprentice programs, teach computer seminars, write textbooks or articles in trade magazines, do documentaries on baseball or shows on woodworking or outdoors for TV, some park rangers and zoo people, people who design exhibits for museums, public health workers here and in 3rd world countries who show people how to bring in fresh water or reduce disease through sanitation, county extension agents who present farmers with test plot results.

#9. Help another student with schoolwork and tell what you did to help. Lots of kids do this in school because the teacher doesn't have time to do everything individually with everybody. Helping a brother or sister counts, too.

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