Rainwater Elementary Third Graders Make UNT Connections

Rainwater third graders in Mrs. Ogunsola's class are making connections and preparing for college!

Any time you pass by Mrs. Ogunsola's third-grade classroom at Rainwater Elementary, be prepared to hear the University of North Texas fight song ringing out into the hall. For this alumni, the UNT fight song has become a BIG part of her classroom. Mrs. O uses the song as a part of their everyday classroom clean-up routine. The song comes on, and the students get to work, moving around the room and cleaning up like a well-oiled machine. The students even know the movements to go along with the song.

One day, Mrs. Ogunsola posted a video of her students singing along on Twitter and tagged UNT. Little did she know, the tweet would set in motion a partnership between the University of North Texas and her third-grade class. By the next day, when she checked her account, she had been retweeted by both the university and their president. The UNT outreach organization contacted Mrs. O and sent her entire class shirts and gear. UNT's president followed this up with another round of North Texas shirts, and they even received a ton of gear from UNT's championship basketball team!

All the swag and UNT gear is incredible, but Mrs. Ogunsola knows that the best part of this partnership is how excited and motivated her students are to go to college. "I think it is so important for kids to see that continuing their education after high school can very much be their reality," says Mrs. O. "By having the daily presence of college be a part of our everyday conversation, I believe it has allowed students to be able to imagine themselves on a university campus one day and know that college can be their future. I think it also gives them a connection to a college or university that they might not have had before, and that might motivate them to want to attend college."

Mrs. Ogunsola uses Twitter to connect with UNT and alumni such as Cynthia Izaguirre from WFAA, inspiring her third graders to achieve their dreams of a bright future. Go Mrs. O and Go Mean Green!