By Anna Skinner
With forms of technology lingering at young students’ fingertips, Washington Woods Elementary School wanted to step up and make a difference.
Stacy Green teaches digital citizenship to all third and fourth graders at the school, teaching the youngsters about proper ways to use social media and how to stay safe online. However, teaching the class isn’t her only duty. She also developed a social media team made up of herself and four fourth grade students: Noah Sanchez, MacKenzie Whitesell, Haiden Cole and Emersyn Graham.
With the students’ help, Green operates Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
“They don’t post directly to the site. They take pictures and we come up with captions together and I post it,” Green said. “We try to keep them safe and not put them on social media. It’s a team effort.”
The students take pictures of activities around the school with iPads. They launched the program at the Leadership Day event the first week of November.
“We sat together on Leadership Day and talked about which (pictures) are good to post and which are blurry,” Sanchez said.
The students focus on five factors to learn good social media manners. “Before we post something we think and make sure it’s true, helpful, inspiring, necessary and kind,” Cole said.
In addition to Leadership Day, Whitesell took pictures of first graders when firefighters came into the school to teach fire safety.
“Taking the pictures helped me learn,” Whitesell said.
Future events that the team will cover include the winter sing along program. The team also took pictures of the third graders putting on a program for Veterans Day.
Green said that she wants the community to get involved to help the kids learn.
“We want to tell (the community) what we are doing and show how we are making our kids into leaders and bringing them into social media safely,” Green said. “They all learn about how to keep themselves safe.”
To keep up with WWES and the social media team, follow them on Facebook at From the Woods to Greatness. Their Twitter and Instagram handle is @wwesleaders.
