DENVER — The KIPP Walden Campus is home to two schools, KIPP Northeast Elementary School and KIPP Northeast Denver Middle School. A Denver Public School (DPS) public charter school campus that serves students in the Green Valley Ranch and Montbello neighborhoods from pre-kindergarten through high school. The campus is a mix of students from diverse backgrounds where 29 different languages are spoken.
“We’re about 75% Latinx, 20% Black and then the rest a mix of Asian and White and Pacific Islander,” said principal Stephani Olson. “We feel academic excellence is a matter of equity for all our kids and we are really dedicated to holding the bar up and never lowering it.”
The school wanted to develop a way to communicate on all levels to all parents regardless of how they receive information about their student’s academic career and activities on campus. They came up with a show called “Community Update” to keep parents informed of what’s going on in their children’s classrooms.
“Community Update started as just, ‘What’s another way that we can reach our families’,” said Jeremy Mullet, assistant principal of KIPP Northeast Denver Middle School. “We sent all the emails and different messaging apps, but I thought we need some sort of video way, some sort of news show type thing that would be fun.”
The show was started by Mullet and is recorded weekly on his cell phone. The idea was to get information to parents and students who might get their information in a variety of ways.
“It just helps different families, different people in general receive information in different ways,” Mullet said. “So the more ways we can provide the updates, provide them the information, let them know what’s going on at our school, the more connected they feel and the more empowered our families feel to come step into this space because they know what’s going on.”
The weekly show is hosted by 5th graders Braydon Fields and Donovan Yeboh who come up with fun segments to connect with their classmates. Both met each other on the campus in kindergarten and feel it’s important to help get information out over the airwaves.
“We tell other people, so they know what’s going on,” Fields said. “We do that so the teachers, our parents, us and other students know like what’s happening going on through the week.”
“Having a school that can do this is super fun and rare to see,” added Yeboh. “It’s for new students and old students to understand what’s going on and also parents to understand what’s going on in their kid’s school.”
The show combines fun with valuable information that parents might miss. Teachers and administrators also make appearances in segments of the show to let parents know their children are in a safe space.
“Families are sending us their children,“ Mullet said. “We look at them as students, but their families look at them as children and with the community update it sort of balances and merges both.”
Olson believes the updates and how they stay connected with their school community are part of the overall success of their campus.
“I think our key to success is belief in our kids,” Olson said. “We believe that they can meet the high expectation we set for them, I think they know that…I think we build relationships and strong supports for kids through mental health support, social/emotional support, but most of all, just true relationships with kids to let them know they can do it.”
You can find more information about KIPP Northeast Denver Middle School on their website.
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