WE ARE A SMALL SCHOOL K-8 IN A TOWN OF ABOUT 800 PEOPLE, OUR SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKER IS A GREAT PARTNER FOR OUR PTO, AND SHE LINES OP PEOPLE FROM A NEARBY UNIVERSITY TO COME AND DO PARENT EDUCATION NIGHTS. MOST HAVE A POOR TURN OUT SADLY ENOUGH, EXCEPT, (I FOUND THIS KIND OF FUNNY) FOR THE NIGHT WE DID THE PERSONALITY TYPE WITH THE COLORS, RED, GREEN, YELLOW OR BLUE PERSONALITIES, WE HAD A GOOD TURN OUT FOR THAT ONE. KNOWING SOME OF THE PEOPLE THAT CAME THE WAY I DO, I HAD TO GIGGLE A LITTLE. JUST A SHARE. THANKS
We are trying this using our school pyramid. All the feeder elementary schools, the middle school, and the high school parents will all be invited. We conducted a survey this past school year on ideas that parents wanted more information about and will conduct a parent program every 6 weeks or so on those topics. We hope that by inviting all the feeder schools, we'll have more than 20 people in the audience.
Our elementary school tried this. We had three night focusing on different subjects, i.e. helping your child with reading, helping your child with math...
The nights were led by the different grade level teachers. They went through the ciriculum for each age and then discussed different games or ideas we could use to help the children with reading or math.
Unfortunately, we had a very poor turn out. There were only one or two parents for each grade (in a school of 700, K-5).
This is always one of my favorite parent involvement ideas. If you really want folks to turn out and get involved with your group, you need to "sell" the benefits of getting involved -- and a great way to do that is to have valuable/fun "content" at your meetings and events.
Stay tuned in the next 6 weeks for PTO Today's newest effort on this front -- School Family Nights. Details to come...
