School: Shawnee Mission East High School
Class: English-Juniors
Instructor: Kristine Turner
Client: Student-selected nonprofit organizations
Problem: How can we use digital media to educate and influence our community to support the mission of a local non-profit organization?
Summary
Students engaged in a real-world marketing project focused on supporting local non-profits. After selecting or being assigned a vetted organization—such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, Scraps KC, or NewHouse—students researched their chosen non-profit’s mission, community impact, and needs. Collaborating with clients and guided by PLC-aligned standards, students created two targeted social media posts: one to inform the public about the organization and another to persuade community action through volunteering, donating, or attending events. With input from SMSD’s multimedia specialist, Jillian Hodges, students learned professional strategies for audience engagement and effective digital communication. Each team also built a professional-style website to document their journey, showcase their work, and reflect on the process—mirroring the approach of an actual marketing firm.
Takeaways
Some failures in this project were that some of my groups struggled to secure a client because they had to find their own client. One group did not hear any responses after about 2 weeks of working with their client. They continued with the project as best they could but were definitely frustrated. In the end, it taught the valuable lesson that business/clients are not guaranteed.
Successes were some groups had an amazing experience and produced great products that they were able to see in real time on social media. A few groups ended up going above and beyond and volunteering for their organization. One student was asked to be an official photographer for an event. So, they made real-world connections that benefited them outside the classroom.
Advice
This was my first year completing CCP. The first year may not go perfectly, but learn from it and adapt. My students for the most part really enjoyed the ownership of this project. I often felt overwhelmed because there are a lot of moving pieces and students were really at the same spot in the project, but I plan on having a better system in place for next year.
Standards/Learning Targets
- RL.1/RI.1 – Citing evidence and making inferences
- RI.8 – Delineate and evaluate argument
- W.4 – Produce clear and coherent writing appropriate to the task, purpose, and audience
- W.8 – Gather information from multiple sources, evaluate the credibility and accuracy of sources, and integrate information to create original texts while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard citation format.
- SL.1 – Participate in collaborative discussions on grade-level topics.
- SL.3 – Evaluate a speaker’s point of view and use evidence to identify efficacious reasoning or distorted evidence.
- SL.4 – Present information using clear, concise, and logical evidence for a specific purpose, audience, and task.