PTO Today

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….

There seem to be more and more sites these days talking about what’s wrong with schools, and I suppose there’s a need for that.  But we also know there’s a lot right about our schools, and we always like when that gets attention too.

It’s why we created our own version of “Find a School” and why we encourage you to click through and add your own comments about your school.  Let the world know what’s going right in your school.  (I’m sure it starts with a great group of parent volunteers, right?).

Hope you’ll also encourage all the parents at your school to chime in.  Our find-a-school tool is referenced by a ton of young parents (choosing where the little one is headed) and moving parents (picking a new house based on the possible new school) – and the more reviews of your school the better.

For encouraging the reviews (and, frankly, for encouraging your parents to take advantage of all the great content on schoolfamily.com), we also have a nice tool you can put right on your PTO or PTA website.

I suppose I should explain that www.schoolfamily.com is a sister site to this one.  Whereas www.ptotoday.com aims to help the leaders of local PTOs and PTAs run their groups most effectively, www.schoolfamily.com aims to help the general population of school parents do their best in the important job of getting their kids through school most successfully.  Sometimes we think of the site as a web assistant to all the work you do (as a parent group leader) in trying to explain why parent involvement is so essential.

Spread the (good) news….

As the son of a 30-year first-grade teacher, I can say with great confidence that teachers don’t need any more ceramic apples. None. Nada. Zippo. I’ll just leave it at that.

While apples got old quick, my mom still does treasure notes she received and loves to remember students of hers, as she reads about their exploits (college, jobs, marriages, babies) in the local paper.

That’s why I really like a new product from Josten’s (yes — the picture and yearbook and ring guys) that I think will make an excellent teacher appreciation gift. It’s a simple-to-make photo memory book that will make a great keepsake for a teacher. I know my mom would have loved it.

The class picture.  Some candids from the field trip or the classroom. Shots from the class play.  Good stuff. Cool idea for the room moms at your school, too.

That seems about dead-on perfect, no?  Love the fact that this Tennessee super honors parents. Love the fact that this PTO leader was the big winner.  And love her very humble and very appropriate – we do it for the kids — reaction.  Cool.

In a perfect world, all of our volunteer efforts would garner this kind of praise.  It’s well-deserved, and it also serves to encourage others to jump in.  That’s also the spirit of our annual Parent Group of the Year campaign. Has your group bragged (It’s OK! It’s Ok!) yet this year?  You should. Nice prizes, too, thanks to our friends at DirectTV.

Love the spirit behind these good-hearted wagers — the zanier the better.  Last week it was the Principal in the bunny suit riding a Harley and today it’s the Principal sleeping overnight on the school roof (in 30-degree weather!). 

In both cases, it was the school leadership and the parents teaming up to create excitement about learning and supporting the school.  And kids who learned that teamwork and fun and hard-work and results can all go together.

Here’s a lesson in the power of impressions over reality and the dangers of unintended consequences.  It’s from New Jersey where one PTO’s “tree” (in the school hallway, each leaf represents a family that donated to the PTO) is causing quite a stir.

Worth noting first that i am 100% certain that the PTO leaders here had no intention of hurting anyone’s feelings or causing harm.

But that doesn’t change how some parents feel, and that reality has to be taken into account.  I hope these guys can all come back together.  It sounds like this group already does a great job of thanking volunteers all year round, so my suggestion:  how about makig this tree two times or three times as big and combining the $$ donators and the hours donators on one big community tree in a “we’re all in this together” spirit.

How do you feel about this dust-up?  Should the parents who donated nothing just pony up a buck and get a leaf?  Or is this gripe legit?

Some interesting and creative reading over on babble.com. Hate is an awfully strong word, but — as a parent group leader — there are days when I can relate to both of these very different perspectives. This writer now hates her PTA after having been a leader.  But this one expected the worst but now loves her PTA (which I actually suspect is a PTO, but that’s just a quibble).

And the babble folks even have a snarky poll (”is the PTA an evil cult or a utopian paradise or somewhere in-between?”) as a follow-up.  Wait — they’re stealing our schtick!

I can definitely laugh at parent group humor and stereotypes, but I’ve been to  an awful lot of PTO and PTA meetings, and I’ve rarely, if ever, met the “Bree” (from Desperate Housewives”) character that is so often portrayed as the typical parent group leader. More often, it’s regular folks holding on to the safety bar of life with both hands just trying to survive the ride like the rest of us.