We want the community and the parents to know that we are doing a wonderful job educating our nation's youth. Right? But we don't strut our stuff often because we are so busy doing our jobs. So, take a few minutes and think of ways to "strut the stuff" of our students.

The school’s website (or a teacher’s website) is the perfect forum to highlight the work and talent of students in your school or class. There is nothing that makes a parent more proud than to see their child’s or grandchild’s talent displayed publicly. With today’s technology it is also a simple process. You can even raise funds in the process.

What some schools are doing is setting up an artwork gallery—yes, just a simple photo gallery—and posting student pictures. You can identify the child’s first name, their grade and maybe something about the artwork (either the format, like: crayon, pottery, water-color) or maybe the artist’s purpose for the artwork. I’m sure this latter information could bring about some humorous responses that might even add a bit of comic relief to your site visitors if using the children's actual words.

Okay, so that is not anything new, but some schools are taking this artwork gallery to the next level by turning it into a contest and letting people vote on their favorite artwork or letting them add comments about the work (moderated by the teacher or parent, of course). One clever idea, that I personally thought was very smart, was to let parents or grandparents order the artwork printed up on items like coffee mugs or t-shirts or key chains. The school or classroom even gets to keep the profit from any sales made!

It would be simple to start.

• Collect the art projects
• Take photos of them
• Post them on the website or on some of the free sites for just this purpose.

There is an online art museum called Artsonia (www.artsonia.com) where you post student artwork (either the teacher or even a parent can do this) and it is free. They even have online contests and every student can have their own little online museum to store their works of art. For our schools we also use a partner company called Propell Shops and if a parent or grandparent wants to order an item with a specific artwork on it, the teacher can just create their own shop and upload the artwork right into the shop. The grandparents just go online and place the order.

So, consider ways of showing off the work of students in your school. If we, as educators, don’t let the public know what a great job we are doing, no one else will. So, make a child proud and “publish” their work—then watch them try even harder to improve next time.