During a tour of campus, Laura Burgess, our Mercersburg Academy guide, told us that students check their email four or five times a day for updates about on camps activities. Frequent announcements make sense on a school campus. It's great to learn about electronic rather than loud speaker distribution. Most of the students use laptops in and out of classrooms, so checking is a simple process.

I took away a couple of other observations that local teachers can implement without costing anyone an arm and a leg. I think of these as CABs, Conversations, Achievements, and Boosters.

Refine conversations. Boarding school students learn to converse. not just talk. Meal times have rotating assigned seats, a dress code. and acceptable social behavior assistance, including refining conversation skills and content. Perhaps CUBS could organize ways for students to learn public behavior consistent with ways we expect public figures to act when they represent us, such as Olympic athletes, elected officials, business executives and diplomats.

Display alumni achievements. Make heros and models for students local. Public school alumni have their own stories to share with students. Let public middle and high school students organize a campus college/university bound students' club; call it CUBS for College/University Bound Students to collect and show these achievements. Just as school athletic records reside on hallway walls, post names of colleges local school alumni have attended, businesses they have started, patents they have recorded, and other notable achievements they have celebrated as a legacy for current and future students.

Boosters. Many boarding schools have full time college prep counselors, plus gaggles of alumni and school supporters who help students prepare for the college of their choice. Local public school students will accept, I think, local community members who provide information to support academic ambitions to attend a college or university. This support can initially occur as an informal group of college grads now operating local businesses talking with students at the local library one about preparing to select a college or university. Boost local academic interests at least as much as athletics.

Thanks, Laura, for sharing your time and thoughts with us. In turn, I want to share a few of them with others who will not attend your academy, but who's students may someday have a chance to work with your alumni in service, academic, and commercial settings, perhaps initially with Tablet or other mobile PCs.

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