Multicultural Involvement Archive

Make your parent group the best it can be by connecting with and engaging everyone in your community—even those who might not speak English or aren't entirely comfortable with school involvement. When you're done reading, head over to the Message Boards to share your thoughts with other leaders facing the same challenges.

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• Multicultural Outreach: Group Thrives on Personal Contact - Translation services, a mentor program, and personal outreach to parents helped make this group our 2006 Parent Group of the Year winner for Outstanding Outreach to a Multicultural Parent Base.
• Build a Multicultural PTO - Reach out to diverse groups and bring them together with these effective involvement and communication strategies.
• National Winner: Embracing Change Makes PTO a Winner - Rezoning and a significant shift in school demographics energized rather than paralyzed PTO Today's 2007 Parent Group of the Year.
• Make Your Family Night a Winner - Fun family nights are a great way to build involvement. Get started with these ideas and tips for success.
• Hmong Parent Group Connects Cultures - St. Paul, Minn., junior high school teacher Ann Hebble talks about the parent group she founded to serve the school's population of Hmong families.
• Create an Effective Survey - Gathering feedback from parents and teachers can help build support for your programs. These tips will help you create a survey and evaluate the results.
• Is Your PTO a Clique? -  You work hard to make your parent group welcoming, but to other parents it still might seem like a closed circle. Here's why—and what to do about it.
• Learning About Ellis Island - This simulation of the Ellis Island immigration experience taught kids and engaged parents in a dynamic way.
• Help Build Student Achievement -  An expert challenges PTOs to increase parent involvement in ways that are connected to the curriculum.
• Mom Builds Minority Involvement - Changing the perception of a parent group by focusing on multicultural outreach.
• Overcome the Language Barrier - Effective strategies parent groups use to reach out to non-English speakers.
• Build Your Volunteer Base: 11 Ideas - Tried-and-true ideas to nurture volunteers and make sure that every involvement experience is a positive one.
• National Runner-up: Diverse Community Shows Strong Bonds - With the PTO Today 2006 Parent Group of the Year Runner-up, differences are celebrated and all voices are given a chance to be heard.
• Connect With Immigrant Parents - One group's innovative event to help immigrant parents adapt to U.S. school culture provides lots of lessons for reaching out to families.
• School Security: How It Affects PTOs - Protecting children on school grounds while also maintaining an open atmosphere for parents is a careful balancing act.
• Where Involvement Begins - Parent groups play a key role in making schools better. Unfortunately, the role often goes unappreciated.
• The Truth About Cliques - If people say your group is a clique, it is. In this case, perception matters.
• Involvement Matters: What To Tell Parents - Hundreds of research studies show that when parents get involved, children do better in school. We sum up the details that every parent should know—and you should tell them.
• Quiz: Rate Your Involvement IQ -  See how your group's attitudes and practices for building parent involvement measure up.
• Send a Powerful Message - You can use communications to improve your group's image and boost involvement. Just put the focus in the right place.
• Multicultural Outreach: Food, Music Bridge Cultural Divide - PTO Today's 2007 Parent Group of the Year for Outstanding Outreach to a Multicultural Parent Base found innovative ways to bring in families with limited English skills, achieving greater involvement and enthusiasm than ever before.
• Service Groups Lend a Hand - Lions, Kiwanis, Rotary, and other community organizations can provide a lot of help to parent groups.
• Multicultural Outreach: Enthusiasm Helps Build Bridges - Parent leaders demonstrated that they wanted not just a broader volunteer base but also a diverse PTO. They created real opportunities for people to take key roles and became PTO Today’s 2008 Parent Group of the Year for Outstanding Outreach to a Multicultural Parent Base.
• Multicultural Outreach: No Barriers to Involvement - International families are never an overlooked part of the school community with PTO Today's 2009 Parent Group of the Year for Outstanding Outreach to a Multicultural Parent Base.
• Small School: Parent Efforts Help School Achieve - PTO Today's 2009 Outstanding Parent Group at a Small School proves that it doesn't take a lot of people to accomplish great things.