Idea

Pencil Give-a-way Project: Build School Culture One Pencil at a Time

Bryan

Have you ever been hit with an idea late at night and just had to spend the next few hours developing it regardless of the time?  That’s what happened to me last Sunday night and the Pencil Give-a-way Project was the result.  As I worked on the idea, I had YouTube videos streaming on my TV that I wasn’t really watching until this video about Adam Braun, CEO of Pencils of Promise, started to play. His organization began by handing out pencils to students in third world countries.  Was this a sign from the universe?  I don’t know but that’s the way I took it.

The impetus for my idea was to start off the school year with a whole school activity that would help build a positive school culture.  My school happens to focus on testing the first few weeks of school.  That’s right.  Students take pre-assessments in almost every class in which they are tested on content they haven’t been taught to establish a baseline to compare with the results of future testing using the same assessment.  Perhaps useful information, but certainly not the best experience for the students who often feel annoyed and frustrated at the prospect of taking a test for which they are not prepared (and doesn’t affect their grade).  So, I wanted to students to have a more positive, unifying experience that promotes things like responsibility, generosity, mindfulness, sharing, gratitude, appreciation, kindness, having fun, creativity, goal setting, and learning.

Pencil Give-a-way Logo

The Pencil Give-a-way Project is a simple project that can hopefully have a positive impact on your school culture.  This is totally unproven since I haven’t tried this in the field, but I hope it will have a powerful impact with a minimal investment of time, money, and resources.

Here is how it works:

Each student gets a pencil and one of the 50 prompts.  You can review the prompts in the instructions for the project.  The prompts range from self-reflections to acts of kindness to goal setting and more.  

Next, follow these steps to conduct the Pencil Give-a-way Project.

  1. Modify, add, subtract, or otherwise edit the prompts as you wish — especially the one with “Mr. Dulmage” in it.
  2. Print enough prompts for all the students in your school.
  3. For each set of 50 prompts, cut them up, and give them to your teachers to distribute to their students along with the appropriate number of pencils, of course. Assuming each teacher has fewer than 50 students, the extra prompts give students a chance to ask the teacher for more.
  4. Direct teachers to distribute one pencil and one prompt per student in the same block/class period on the same day. Students may request another prompt if they wish.
  5. Encourage the students to complete the task on their prompt and share with each other.

Optional Activities:

  • Share the full list of prompts (pdf | Google Sheet) with the students so they can do more.
  • Collect pictures, stories, reflections, lessons learned and other feedback from teachers and students on the experience and tweet them @pencilgiveaway

That’s it! You will also find more information in the instructions about ideas for obtaining the pencils and suggested times throughout the year to do this project.  If it goes well with the students and teachers, perhaps it can be done multiple times throughout the school year. I welcome any feedback on this project and how to make it better.  I also look forward to sharing my school’s experience with it this school year.  Feel free to tweet @pencilgiveaway with your thoughts, ideas, pictures, or anything else related to this project.

Project Resources