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◄ A kindergarten student describes the state map she researched and created for a Mane Event booth called “Kinder Maps Out of America.” Each student in kindergarten was assigned a state. The students had to report five facts about the state and then decorate their states based on their facts.
free and reduced lunch program. One class built robots for the event; another incubated chicks. High school students performed a song they had written about “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Kindergarteners recited facts on states. The booths went on and on, taking up two gyms, a patio, a hallway and the school auditorium.
“The response from our school and community was miraculous, and the students were so proud to show their parents what they had learned and accomplished over the school year,” Price says.
“It was a student-led open house on steroids,” muses Superintendent Marshall Harrison, who says the event will be an annual affair.
Students weren’t the only ones who were excited about the Mane Event. Lee and Harrison estimate that more than 1,500 people were in attendance. When it was over, organizers had to politely shoo away stragglers who wouldn’t leave.
While Blooming Grove ISD is not the first district to put on a yearend showcase for the community, the Mane Event stands out because it is 100 percent led by students. Every detail — from the event name to the promotional artwork to the projects showcased — is the work of Blooming Grove ISD students.
“The true telltale for me is when people who don’t have any vested interest in the school — maybe they don’t have any grandkids up here or their kids are grown — but they came to the Mane Event anyway, and they talked about it in the churches and they talked about it in the post office,” says Harrison.
Students at the event were ready at each booth to tell visitors about their projects or, in many cases, to help visitors experience the project. For instance, the chemistry and physics classes performed live experiments for onlookers. The school band played. Social studies students performed a scripted medieval dinner party, complete with student-made costumes.
Blooming Grove ISD hasn’t always had this level of community involvement — or such fun projects to show off to the community. When Lee started in the district one year ago, things were very different.
“It was amazing,” says M’Lissa Price, the high school’s family and consumer science teacher.
M’Lissa Price
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Price sponsors the local chapter of Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA), a national career and technical student nonprofit organization. Price says the Mane Event was a way for her students to show the community what FCCLA competitions are all about. FCCLA students from Blooming Grove ISD competed at the state level last year, and one student advanced to nationals.
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“Having worked in larger districts, one of the things I noticed was that Blooming Grove was kind of stuck in 1982,” Lee says, referring to the district’s “very traditional” take on teaching. “I challenged teachers to get outside their comfort zones, to think outside the box. If there was one thing that was evident about all my teachers, it was that they were very passionate about their students and wanted to be more student-centered, but they didn’t know how to make that happen.” As much as the Mane Event is a community outreach event, it also is designed to inspire teachers to explore project-based learning throughout the year. The event also offers students a chance to practice their communication and presentation skills. Korri Owens, now a sophomore at Blooming Grove High School, presented an honors English class project on the novel “The Book Thief.”