Most high school education programs are at their core the same thing from school to school and subject to subject. So how do you make your program standout so that it is recognizable to students, parents and colleagues? The best way I have found comes from corporate marketing ideas and specifically the idea of branding. Branding is a way for a company or group create an identity. This concept is not new, but how we as educators apply is relatively new. As with corporate branding, educational branding focuses on the creation of imagery (logos, headers, etc.) and written(slogans, taglines, etc.) and even a customer service experience (document templates, communication methods and frequency of communications) that are all centered on referring to your program as one item.

Before building much of the iconic brand materials such as logos or document templates you need to have a name for your brand, which you probably already have in your department or program name. If your department name is something generic like “The Science Department” you may consider building a nickname like “The Laboratory” something that can denote certain characteristics and feelings that you want to promote.  Brands often center around a single concept or image such as a logo, this gives you a good place to start building out the rest of the brand. One of the best places to start is creating a couple of different logos that all center around the same program title. These can then be used for t-shirts that students and staff can wear around school promoting what your program does and giving it visibility. This concept of building an image can then be extended to “customer service” expectations or how you communicate with parents and students. In my classroom I focus on quick simple emails that I can send out to students or parents, I often create “madlib” style email templates that allow me to send out quick emails by adding just a few critical pieces of information.