PTO Today

Got your attention, didn’t I? Well this article about a PTA sponsoring a car creation contest certainly captured my interest! Kids who participated in the contest “drove” their car creations to the school’s drive-in. Loved that this event:

• fostered kid’s creativity
• encouraged kids and parents to work together
• promoted learning (how cool is it that it prompted kids to get online and research cars, etc.?)
• created a fun sense of community!

Thought you’d enjoy hearing about this unique PTA event. PTO Today is all for parent groups events that promote learning or tie into the curriculum.

If you spend anytime on our website, you know that we are all about  parent groups building community. That’s why we love this idea that a New Jersey PTA came up with; use their school’s PTA website to help neighbors in a down economy.  To accomplish this, they have set up an “items for exchange” section on their website — see the “can anyone use a…” tab. Very cool.

”With the current economy the way it is, it would be kind of nice for neighbors to help neighbors,” said Rodger Lippman, the PTA’s president and webmaster. “Items that may be obsolete for one person can go a long way toward helping someone else.”

Now, that’s the kind of parent group that will attract attention and make people want to join. Thought maybe your parent group would like to take this idea and run with it.

What does your PTO or PTA do to build community or reach out to neighbors? Jump in here and tell us about it.

I figured I’d take this opportunity in early July to speak to you as a parent, as opposed to as a PTO or PTA leader. Funny, isn’t it, how sometimes (often) our work being good PTO leaders makes it even harder to find the time to be good school parents?

Tackling that particular parenting challenge is the whole point of our sister site over at SchoolFamily.com. I hope you’ll take some time to check it out. I find helpful new stuff on there nearly every day.

Perhaps most interestingly, we’ve just added a brand-new “community” section on SchoolFamily.com. It’s a great place to connect with other parents and find solutions to the kind of school challenges (and joys!) you may be having with your family. I really like the interactive Q&A section, too.

As an added bonus, if you’re a PTO Today fan, the new SchoolFamily.com community functions provide a nice sneak preview of what’s coming soon for ptotoday.com. Expect even more cool functionality in the ptotoday.com version.

If you’ve been reading these tips for a while, you know how much we value parent involvement. The research makes it so clear that increasing parent involvement is perhaps the most important thing your group can achieve.

As your group gets better at involvement, you should think some about how you can increase your impact even more. Some of the most effective first steps to bringing parents in and making a connection are fun, welcoming events like a movie night or a carnival or a spaghetti supper. I’m a big fan of the value of community around a school.

As parents do start getting engaged, though, the research makes a strong case for integrating your family events with academic goals of the school. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to have the language arts teacher droning on to parents about the reading curriculum. But what about a Family Reading Night ? How can you merge other academic goals and your family events? That’s a second-level involvement step that can have an even greater impact at your school.

The whole thing is kind of a ladder. Like getting your kids into swimming — first you get them to the pool, then they dip their toes in the water, then they splash around some, then they can maybe swim a few strokes in the lanes. Creatively connecting the classroom with your family events can be another step on the ladder for your school next year.

Sounds like these folks are making strong involvement progress bringing lessons from statewide training program back to their school.

Love this quote:

“There are four levels of community and school relationships,” Tyree said.

“There are closed doors where no one is welcome, doors open but no one is invited, only invited if asked, and then the partnership school, which is what we want to be.”

That’s dead-on perfect.  Good luck!

Family events — excellent.  Family events with an academic connection — even better.  So kudos to this Massachusetts PTO for their creative math night for parents and kids with an emphasis on supporting the school math curriculum.

Looking for family night ideas (and the tools and step-by-steps for making them work)?   You’ve got to check out our School Family Nights program.

I ran aross this column in Newsweek from a really involved who was struck that her daughter chose “dad” as role model on a school assignment. Not “mom & dad”, just dad.

I realize that’s not the warmest, fuzziest topic for Mother’s Day week, but the column does provide a unique perspective for all of us really involved school parents.  Can we be too involved?  Is it OK if our kids don’t value all the involvement now?  Will they value it later? 

Give it a read and post your thoughts.  I’ll jump back in with some more thoughts on this one (especially on the fairly heated debate in the comments section) soon….

Was fun this morning to appear with Gene Lavanchy on Fox 25 in Boston to talk about Internet Safety for families.  You can watch the appearance below:

We have a whole ton of good content for your parents over on the Internet Safety Week pages on schoolfamily.com.  As part of this important week, I hope you’ll share these links or any/all of these tips with the families at your school.

Love it when districts “get it” when it comes to honoring and valuing volunteer efforts in schools.  Here’s a recent parent-focused release from the Anoka-Hennepin district in Minnesota that captures that well.

Two more cool things about the release: 

1. All that data on volunteer hours was captured because the district uses our PTO Manager “Volunteer Builder” software to help encourage volunteering and to track volunteer efforts.  Neat to see such nice end results.

2. We’re goig to be in Anoka-Hennepin Tuesday for our PTO Expo.  I’ll be presenting a “best habits of successful PTOs and PTAs” keynote in the morning.  If you’re in the area, i hope you’ll come by.

On the heels of the Go Green Night announcement last weekend, we’re equally excited to be working with the folks at Symantec to introduce an annual Internet Safety Week for schools.  For 2009, ISW is next week, April 27 – May 1.

Couple of relevant pieces to this story for you:

1. We’ve created a great set of resources for parents over on SchoolFamily.com.  Check out our Internet Safety Week section for all kinds of insight and tools.  I hope you’ll share the link in your emails (you are using the new, free Parent Express Email service, aren’t you?), your websites and even your print newsletters to home.

2. We created a flyer to help you participate in Internet Safety Week at your school.  It has great tips for helping your parents engage with their kids online, which is the first step to all of this. You can download the photocopy-ready flyer there (from our File Exchange) and share with all of your parents.

3. Symantec just launched its new, free OnlineFamily.Norton service for families.  I’ve been an Advisory Board member for the product’s development, and I must say — pretty darn cool. I think the big switch these days has to be from parents thinking of Internet Safety and Parenting as two different things to parents realizing that — with the ‘Net being such a central part of kids lives — Internet Safety and Parenting are one in the same.  The good news is that the new Norton tool helps make that a reality.  USA Today agrees in a review of the product today.

More to come next week on this exciting devlopment….