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PARTNERSHIP APPLICATION FORM 2024

Every school has a story to tell. Are you ready to explore the story of YOUR school?

Mission & Project

More than a place of learning, schools are anchors for and reflections of the neighborhoods they serve. Today, we have a unique opportunity to capture our school stories to develop a cultural and historical understanding of our city’s origins.

We run programs in DC schools that empower students to research and discover the history of their school community. We then create a permanent, museum-quality exhibit installed in their school lobby that shares their findings with the broader community.

We see our project taking place in every DC school that sees value in preserving and learning from the past. Every program and exhibit will be different, reflecting the unique stories of each school community.

Purpose of Application & Important Dates

By filling out this application, our team will get to know you and your school and assess needs and timelines. We would like to serve every interested school, but we are limited in how many schools we can partner with each year.

Your answers may be brief – we know you are busy! We may reach out to discuss your application during the selection process.

If you have questions, please reach out to Jen Harris at jen@storyofourschools.org.

Application Due: April 1, 2024 at 5pm

Board Vote: April 8, 2024

Notified of Selection: April 12, 2024

There are two ways to submit your application:

Download the PDF application and answer the questions within the PDF or in a separate word document. Send your completed application to Jen Harris at jen@storyofourschools.org.
Fill out of the digital application below and click submit. Please note you cannot save the application while you are working on it.

Application Form

If you’d prefer to submit a paper application form, please download the Application PDF here!

Download PDF

YOUR INFORMATION

Contact Name

First Last

Your relationship to the school (i.e. administrator, teacher, parent, etc).

SCHOOL INFORMATION

School Name

School Address

Street Address Address Line 2 ZIP Code

Ward

Neighborhood

Grades served by the school

Grades likely to participate in the SOOS project

Is your school a DC Public School (DCPS), DC Public Charter School, or a DC Private School?

Please describe your student body and school culture

Why do you want to bring The Story of Our Schools to your school?

Is there a specific story or snippet of history you'd like to explore as it relates to your school?

A PARTNERSHIP WITH THE STORY OF OUR SCHOOLS

Our partnerships with each school generally kick off in the late spring when we begin project planning. The student program begins in the late fall and runs throughout the school year. The exhibit design is finalized over the summer, and the exhibit installation and reveal happens in the fall of the following school year.

The following is an example timeline:

Kick-off with new partner school: May 2024
Planning and preliminary research: Summer 2024
Kick off student program: October 2024
Finish student program: May 2025
Exhibit reveal event at the school: Fall 2025

The creation of our exhibits requires materials such as historical photographs and documents, stories and photographs from longtime community members, architectural drawings, and/or artifacts such as trophies, yearbooks, or school uniforms. Does your school have access to potential resources like these?

Note: If not, it’s ok! We just want to know if anything is out there.

To ensure an effective partnership, it is important that school leadership, teachers, parents, and area residents are committed to the project’s success and participate whenever possible. Please tell us about your school’s interest in the project and how a partnership with The Story of Our Schools will engage different members of the community.

Please include letters of support of this project from at least 2 of the following (School principal; Parent Teacher Organization or parent leaders; Teacher(s) interested in leading the program; Students)

Drop files here or

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, txt, Max. file size: 10 MB, Max. files: 5.

IN THE CLASSROOM

The Story of Our Schools does not bring in our own teachers. We collaborate with and rely upon the expertise and commitment of teachers within our partner schools. We support these teachers by providing a curriculum and a teacher coach.

To help gauge time commitments and expectations, each lesson is designed to be an hour long, and students will need to meet once or twice a week covering one lesson per session, depending on the pace desired. Our provided curriculum has roughly twelve lessons. Teachers will also need planning time for reviewing the curriculum or planning field trips.

While the lessons can run during the school day or as an afterschool club, our curriculum is aligned with common core standards and particularly well-aligned to DC social studies standards. The curriculum also complements multiple US History courses at the high school level and could be made into an elective course if that route is possible for your school.

Note: if your students are meeting afterschool, we expect teachers to be compensated for any additional working hours. In DCPS schools this has typically been achieved using administrative premium pay.

Is there a teacher at your school that would be interested in leading the students in their year-long research effort? If so, please tell us about them.

Do you foresee our project integrating with another project or class within school hours? Or would you prefer to run our project as an afterschool activity?

THE EXHIBIT

This project ends in a permanent, museum-quality exhibit installed on your school’s grounds. Tell us about the available space at your school where an exhibit might be housed. Note: Exhibits can be designed for unique large or small spaces. We just want to understand what known space is available if any.

FUNDRAISING

The Story of Our Schools believes every interested school should have the opportunity to work with us regardless of cost. Each school project costs roughly $80,000 depending on the size and scope of the exhibit. As a non-profit we are constantly fundraising throughout the year, but we require our school communities commit to jointly fundraise for certain aspects of the project.

Please indicate your willingness to make our joint fundraising a priority and list any organizations, committees, or partners that would help us in this effort. Do you have any specific challenges that would make a fundraising partnership difficult?

THAT'S A WRAP!

Is there anything else we should know about your school during our selection process?

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.