Back to School Night is held a few days before the first day of school. Families are invited to tour the school and meet their teachers. Parents are not given the names of their children's teachers until this eveing, so it's incentive to show up to find out who has whom. It's about a two hour event held from 4-6 or so.
About 3-4 weeks into the school year we have Parent Nights. 1st-3rd grade one evening and 4th-5th grade another evening. This is when parents are asked to leave their children home as it is ~40 minutes of curriculum overview and 'what happens in the classroom' stuff. Very boring for children as it is about educating the parents on classroom expectations, benchmarks for the year, curriculum etc. It's also a time for parents to ask questions. The key word here is "ASKED", the letter sent home by the school administrators asks the parents to not bring their children...most comply (~95%).
All schools in our district do this...K-12. Allows for a 'fun' evening for the kids and an 'informative' evening for the parents.
But FYI, teachers are not required to be at the Back to School Night. However, they are required to be at the Parent Night. That is why Back to School is scheduled to begin at 4:00 PM. The teachers are already in the building setting up their classrooms so it's timed to allow for them to stay a bit later without a major inconvenience. All 40+ teachers and paras in our school stay for the evening with the exception of one first grade teacher who is notoriously absent each year.
Yes I mean students-- the teachers feel the kids do not need to hear the boring details of curriculum night- an that they get disruptive after 20 min. most of the time, these last 45-1 hr.--
Do you mean children as in the students??
We always invite the whole family. This is a great chance for them to show their parents their new classrooms, teachers, friends and all of the other good stuff going on.
Our principal has let the teachers vote not to have any of the children attend the Back to School Night evening scheduled for next year (2008/2009 school year). Anyone elses school do this?
