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National Exhibition Month

GUIDE FOR CREATING A SUCCESSFUL LOCAL EVENT

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The following tips and guidelines can help you to create and promote a high quality, successful local event as part of National Exhibition Month.

Local Goals

What makes a local event successful? For this nation-wide campaign, a gratifying result is the following:

• Increased capacity of your school to do outstanding Exhibitions, and
• New audiences in your community agree that Exhibitions are a positive and compelling form of assessment.

Chart your involvement

May is coming up quickly, so be realistic about what you can do. Nevertheless, to be in a better position to participate fully in subsequent years, you should stretch as far as you can and build off your involvement this year.

The following participation guide offers suggestions for how your school might participate in the campaign. National Exhibition Month will occur annually, so if this is your first time, we encourage you to start modestly this year, then think about how to plan for more extensive participation next year.

We identify four phases of implementation with regard to exhibitions and suggest a number of public activities that correspond to each phase.

Phase 1: Beginning Implementation - Student learning is regularly assessed at the school, but exhibitions as an authentic assessment strategy are not currently being used. The school has plans to begin or has shown interest in developing exhibition structures.

Suggestions for Phase 1: Participate only as an observer this year. Monitor National Exhibition Month 2008 and make plans for next year.

Phase 2: Partial Implementation - Exhibitions are implemented by a select number of faculty as an authentic assessment strategy in some grades and disciplines. Exhibitions are completed by some students; some exhibitions structures are in place.

Suggestions for Phase 2: Select some or all of Activities 1-3 below.

Phase 3: Demonstrating Implementation - Exhibitions are implemented by a majority of the faculty in most grades and disciplines as an authentic assessment strategy. Exhibitions are completed by many students; a majority of exhibition structures are in place.

Suggestions for Phase 3: Select some or all of Activities 1-6 below.

Phase 4: Systemic Implementation - Exhibitions are an integral part of the program school-wide using authentic assessment strategies in all grades and disciplines. Exhibitions are completed by all students; the school has developed the capacity to be self-sustaining and continuously improving.

Suggestions for Phase 4: Select some or all of Activities 1-9 below.

(Phases adapted from the Turning Points Guide, Benchmarks to Becoming a Turning Points School, http://www.turningpts.org/guides.htm)

Public Activities to Celebrate National Exhibition Month

1. Document exhibition practices and achievements and send reports to CES National to disseminate via the CES website and its print newsletter (send summaries to Ramon Calhoun rcalhoun@essentialschools.org).
2. Document exhibition practices and achievements and send pictures and stories to local news organizations or community audiences after exhibitions have occurred.
3. Hold a school-wide or public event to recognize the exhibitions that have occurred and celebrate student achievements with community members.
4. Post a summary of exhibition activities during the national campaign on the school's website or in newsletters, blogs, or reports to community audiences.
5. Write a letter to the editor or submit an Op/Ed piece to the local newspaper prior to any actual Exhibitions (after you've held exhibitions if you're in Phase 2).
6. Invite neighboring educators, community leaders, parents, legislators, city officials, reporters and other thought leaders to observe one or more Exhibitions.
7. Invite and prepare neighboring educators, community leaders, parents, legislators, city officials, or other thought leaders to sit on juries.
8. Issue a local press release describing participation in the national campaign.
9. Invite local media to cover an exhibition, interview students and staff, and write/produce a story.

If you are in Phase 3 or 4 and you choose to invite media to attend Exhibitions, you are operating on a different plane and need to take extra care to insure that your Exhibitions represent the best authentic assessment practices of your school. It is critical that the media perceive Exhibitions as genuine assessments with real consequences that are part of a larger instructional context. In other words, you should explain that as part of the on-going process toward content and skill, not all the Exhibitions will be exemplary. Make clear that in many cases, students can be asked to re-do and refine their work to meet the school's standards, and that one important purpose of Exhibitions is to help document student growth over time.

The important issue to remember is that no one controls the media. They may have agendas that have nothing to do with your school's desire to advance Exhibitions over standardized tests. Nevertheless, since local media are important conduits to greater public audiences, the risk is generally worth taking.

This warning is not meant to discourage you from including the media; rather it is to alert you to the necessity of presenting high-quality Exhibitions and the school structures that support them.

If you're in Phase 2, you may have a more forgiving audience, but you will be more likely to persuade them of the value of Exhibitions if what they see is exceptional. Forgiving or not, each observer has friends and relatives whose opinions can be shaped by what they hear from the observer.

If you're in Phase 1 and would like to participate next year, consider what would be required to take your exhibition work to the next level and host an outside audience. Calibrate the distance between what you have in place currently and what you would need to be comfortable opening your Exhibitions to the public, and begin making plans to fill in those gaps.

Other qualifiers

To evaluate whether or not you have Exhibition candidates ready to meet the outside world, also consider the following:

• The enthusiasm and experience of teachers and students. In order to be prepared for a public event, people must "get it" quickly and immediately jump on board.
• The degree to which the Exhibitions are centered on "essential questions" that require critical thinking skills rather than simplistic linear reports with "yes" or "no" answers. The best Exhibitions are not just projects that motivate students; rather, they evoke fundamental questions that engage students in real intellectual work.
  
  Visit www.essentialschools.org/cs/resources/view/ces_res/137 to read a Horace article for an explanation of essential questions and how they are used.
• The use of an easily understood and observable scoring system (rubric), so that your outside guests can appreciate and support the system by which the Exhibition is being judged. Good rubrics require serious investments in development and training, so it is not a task to be undertaken at the last minute. Choose instead an Exhibition based on a rubric that has been tested and improved over time, can be stated in clear, plain language, and demonstrably does the following:
• Helps teachers define excellence and plan how to help students achieve it.
• Communicates to students what constitutes excellence and how to evaluate their own work.
• Communicates goals and results to parents and others.
• Helps teachers or other raters be accurate, unbiased and consistent in scoring.
• Documents the procedures used in making important judgments about students.
  (List from Herman, Aschbacher & Winters, A Practical Guide To Alternative Assessment, 1992.)
• Availability of appropriate mentors and jurists. The jurists, in particular, will need to be available not only for the event itself, but for a thorough orientation to the scoring rubric prior to the Exhibition. Depending on the subject of the Exhibition, seek candidates through local Chambers of Commerce, civic groups such as Kiwanis and Rotary, arts organizations, and professional associations. Check in your Yellow Pages under "Associations" for a host of organizations in almost every imaginable field.

Getting Organized

Use the following checklist to help plan and carry out a successful event.

Management of the project

• Confirm dates, names, subjects and locations of Exhibitions with all participants: teachers, students, and jurists.
• For outside jurists, confirm availability for orientation prior to the Exhibition.
• Form your National Exhibition Month work team, including a Coordinator. As the "go-to" person, this individual will carry out or supervise most of the activities of National Exhibition Month. If your school has a Public Information Officer or outreach specialist you can call on, now is a good time to do so.

Advance Preparation

Your Guest List

• Prepare your guest list. It may include parents, subject matter experts, local congress-people, local government officials, school board members, the superintendent of your district, outside jurists, and college professors, among others.
• Meet with your outreach specialist and/or review Advocacy Action Kit for information about communicating with elected officials and members of the media.
• Continue to solicit and confirm outside jurists, both for the Exhibition and for orientation.

Invitations

• Issue invitations (in setting time, allow time for briefing meeting prior to the Exhibition.)
• Record responses.
• Follow up "no responses" with phone or e-mail.
• Confirm positive responses with phone or e-mail.

Prepare handouts for guests

• Folders with event and date listed on outside
• National or local news articles about standardized testing
• CES Fact Sheet about National Exhibition Month
• Copy of news release (see Advocacy Action Kit) and clippings of any stories about your school
• Agenda - what you will see today
• Explanation and copy of scoring rubric
• Frequently Asked Questions about Exhibitions

Host

• Identify the individual who will act as host (this could be you, of course).
• With the host, prepare a briefing for visitors that includes the following:
• A description of what the guests will see that day (for example, a performance or a culminating exhibition that is required for graduation),
• An explanation of rubrics and how they work, particularly in this case
• An endorsement of Exhibitions as a superior means of assessing students knowledge and their ability to use it
• A question and answer session
• Rehearse the briefing.

Documentation

• Arrange for a photographer to cover the preparation for and the Exhibition itself.
• Notify your web page editor and arrange for information and pictures to be put up on your site and to be sent to CES National (send to Ramon Calhoun, rcalhoun@essentialschools.org).
• Similarly, notify your school newspaper of the Exhibition.

Signage

• Prepare signage directing visitors from front door to presentation room, rest rooms, and front office.
• Prepare parking lot signage if front door and/or handicapped access door is not obvious from the lot.

Meetings

• Hold orientation session for outside jurists several days prior to Exhibition.
• Weekly, meet with outreach specialist and/or review Advocacy Action Kit to make sure promotion plan is in action.
• Meet with student presenters to review Student Checklist (in separate document).

Day of the Exhibition

Welcome your guests

• Make sure signage is in place.
• Greet visitors...(possibly a table with nametags, a sign-in sheet, and student hosts at door).
• Accompany visitors to briefing room.
• Conduct briefing for visitors. Conclude promptly, but take questions if there is time before the start of the Exhibition.
• Accompany visitors to Exhibition room (if different).

Seek feedback

At conclusion of student Exhibition, ask your visitors to fill out and leave with the host a simple evaluation that can be used to improve the event next year. For example:

Did the Exhibition

• Meet your expectations?
• Exceed your expectations. In what ways?
• Not meet your expectations. In what ways?

After the Exhibition

• The next day, review the Advocacy Action Kit and catch up on any tasks still remaining.
• After a few days, phone or e-mail all visitors. Ask:
• Has your evaluation or impression of the event changed since day of Exhibition? In what ways?
• For media people - will they be running stories? What other information can you provide? If not, why not? What would persuade them to run stories in the future?
• Follow up with people who said they would come and didn't. Why not?
• Conduct post-mortem(s) with students, teachers and National Exhibition Month work team. What would they change? What worked?
• Compile report and answer CES National questionnaire, which will be available online in early June.
• Establish National Exhibition Month 2009 work team, and identify goals for 2009.
• Begin preparations for 2009. Keep abreast of developments on the CES National website, http://www.essentialschools.org.