PSA Focus: Why come to school?

For our most recent assignment to create a PSA, I've been collecting responses from teachers about the question, "Why do kids come to school if they no longer have to come there to get the information?" In my survey, I asked teachers to summarize their response with one word or phrase. Here's what a Wordle of what those responses looks like:

One of the other questions I asked was about which ideas teachers think are the most important ones to convey to their students, and I provided a list of 14 options, asking teachers to rank their top three choices. To get an overall sense of what teachers valued the most, I weighted the responses so that first-choice ideas got more points than third. Not surprisingly, skills such as problem-solving, responsibility, and adult accountability ranked the highest. I also found it interesting to see reading and writing literacy scoring ahead of content knowledge. It's nice to see that data validating what literacy experts have been saying over the past decade. Here's the accumulation of results, as well as a link to the interactive graph:

I've been very pleased to get nearly 40 responses to the survey so far. I shared it with colleagues at SUNY Plattsburgh as my goal is to provide them with a PSA that they can use to encourage the pre-service teachers in their education program. As is the case with most projects that I undertake, it now promises to take on a life of its own, thoroughly draining me of any last remaining time and energy that I had been reserving for a special occasion. But of course, I wouldn't have it any other way!