The Parent Voice

People for Education recently released a Parent Involvement Toolkit. This toolkit is for principals, teachers and parents about doing what matters most. You can download the toolkit for free from their website here plus you can watch an accompanying video, a recent webinar with University of Toronto Professor, Carl Corter, entitled, “Parent Involvement That Makes a Difference”.

Surprisingly, findings show the kind of involvement that makes the biggest difference in students’ chances for success in school isn’t what most parents might expect. More important than limiting TV time, volunteering on the school council, or even monitoring homework, there are four things that lead the pack:

• Letting your child know you have high expectations for him or her
• Talking with your child about school
• Focusing on students’ attitudes, more than their marks
• Reading to and/or with your child

In addition to the download for the Parent Toolkit, you’ll find handy tip sheets to share and download for parents, principals and teachers.

Although Anne Hathaway Public School already had a great snack program in place, Vice-Principal JoAnne Knechtel knew there was room for improvement. Along with another teaching staff member, the school nurse, nine students, and the Perth District Health Unit, the Health Busters are working together to educate the school body and at the same time provide healthy snacks options the whole school can enjoy.

To help get the group started, team members went on field trip to the grocery store and participated in a Supermarket Tour, lead by a PDHU dietitian. The tour lasted a little over one hour, and gave students time to learn how to read a food label, how to compare similar products for nutritional content, and where to find healthy options in the grocery store.

Since then, the Health Busters have been meeting regularly to brainstorm snack ideas and ‘bust’ common snack myths. For example, the group promotes eating fresh fruits instead of gummy fruit-flavoured snacks, as gummy snack products do not typically contain any real fruit, and therefore provide little, if any, nutritional value. And the team is sure to stick to the rules – snacks must contain foods from at least two food groups, while meals must include a minimum of three. Congratulations to Anne Hathaway for busting their way to healthier eating!

Watch these health-fighting students in action at the grocery store:

It’s about this time of year that I begin to look ahead to next year. I know, it sounds crazy. After all, March Break has just ended. But if you look at your calendar right now, you will see that there are only 12 weeks left in the school year. Specifically, I begin to think about next year’s school council. Who will “graduate” in June and move on with their child? Will we be able to fill those vacant positions? How do we get more parents involved next September? What will next year look like?

Lately, I’ve begun to question the effectiveness of our current “recruiting” practices, knowing full well that there’s always room for improvement and that there’s got to be better ways to connect with parents. It’s one thing to advertise in the school newsletter, embrace technology and social media by posting here on this website, tweeting or putting it out there on facebook. But are we really connecting with parents? Or is this dissemination of information (and requests) more one-sided? Gulp. I’m thinking that despite my best intentions and efforts, it’s been the latter.

I came across this article in PTO Today by Liz O’Donnell. Although based in America, I think the message is very much the same. There’s some good information in here that I think all school councils can relate to, apply and learn from and why I’m sharing this here today. I know I’m learning more and more, and I’m being reminded, that it’s not about the volunteering itself…it’s about the relationships.

As always, I invite your comments and would love to hear from you.

9 Steps To Recruit More Volunteers

A common lament among PTO leaders is “We just can’t get volunteers.” And while it certainly might feel that way to an overcommitted, overtired board, it’s probably not completely accurate. By redefining your idea of a volunteer and changing how you respond to “I’d love to, but,…” you can tap into a wider group of parents than you might have thought were available and accomplish more than you imagined. Here are nine steps to build your volunteer base and enlist an army of unstoppable parents.

1. Set Expectations—Your Own

You’ve made the choice to serve on the PTO and you’ve thrown yourself into the role. Not everyone is going to share your energy and enthusiasm, and that’s OK. Accept that other parents may not be willing or able to log the hours you do, and be appreciative of the time they can give. The last thing you want is to send the message that a mom doesn’t care about her child because she can’t staff the book fair. Maybe she can make reminder calls or provide supplies for the event. Remember, most people start small before taking on the big tasks. The person who volunteers an hour this time may end up running the entire event in the future.

Read more…

In the rural township of Ashfield, Ontario, near Lake Huron, lies Brookside Public School. Brookside’s greater community includes families from Lucknow, Dungannon, Auburn, Port Albert, Kingsbridge and Goderich. These West Coast communities are rich with unique ecosystems and environmental gems, such as the Nine Mile & Maitland rivers, beautiful Lake Huron, Wawanosh Nature & Conservation Centres, several Provincial Parks, Hullett Marsh, Saratoga Swamp, Greenock Swamp & Wetland Complex and much more. It’s the perfect environment for students to expand their learning outside the classroom by applying their knowledge and understanding to the real world.

Brookside Public School has recently entered the Majesta Trees of Knowledge contest where one lucky Canadian school will be awarded a $20,000 Outdoor Classroom, and they are now one of the ten finalists! Congratulations Brookside! But we need your votes to help Brookside’s Outdoor Classroom become a reality. You can vote once a day, everyday, until May 17th, 2012. So please vote now and help us spread the word! For more information, please watch this video or you can go straight to the voting booth here! Thank you!

I’ve been coming across several articles and research papers lately about play based learning. The research continues to show that environments promoting play-based learning ultimately promote healthy brain development and that literacy-enriched play settings help children learn about the functions of writing and increase their ability to recognize play-related print (Play’s Potential in Early Literacy Development, 2009).

In 2011, the theme of Family Literacy Day was Play for Literacy. I’ve taken these “Play for Literacy” tips from the ABC Life Literacy Canada website and you can find many more tips and resources here. So go ahead, break out the Bingo and board games, plan a scavenger hunt, or do a crossword together and have fun keeping those mental skills sharp and growing…mom and dad included!

Here Are Some Play for Literacy Tips:

1. Count at every opportunity. Example: “Can you get THREE spoons from the drawer, please?”
2. Have a fun alphabet chart on the kitchen wall and make up your own games to play. Example: What starts with “P”?
3. Kids read when books are at their fingertips, so put them everywhere! At the kitchen table, in the bathroom…
4. Encourage your children to teach or show you what they learned in school.
5. Challenge children to learn a new word every day, based on their age and grade level.
6. When grocery shopping with small children, name and spell out each item as you put it in the shopping cart.
7. Play lots of word games: Upwords, Balderdash, Pass the Bomb, Mad Libs, crossword puzzles, Scrabble.
8. Take the whole family to the library, have everyone pick out their favourite childhood story and take turns sharing them with each other.
9. Lead by example – read and have books in the house.
10. Listen to music of different genres – melody, tone, rhythm, pitch, etc. helps with sound recognition, which is necessary in early reading

Jeremy Brock, a teacher at South Perth Centennial Public School, is interested in the technology that makes teaching and learning fun again. And what better way is there to explore technology than by incorporating it and using it daily in the classroom. Welcome to Mr. Brock’s Grade 7 Bobcat’s Blog! This week, Mr. Brock (on twitter @jerbrock) asked his students, “Why use electronics and technology in school?” Too often, this question is debated among educators, teachers, parents…aka: adults. So why not hear it from the students themselves? Here are just a few reasons why these Bobcat’s like to use technology in the classroom. To read the full blog click here.

“The reason i think technology is more fun is that you get to try new things and experiment instead of doing the same thing all the time.”

“The technology helps me focus on my work and I think that I pay more attention and I feel that I can do work quickly and more efficiently.”

“…it makes school allot better in my opinion that’s really the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning…”

“Another reason why we should be allowed to use technology is we develop new skills that may be helpful in the future.”

“I would much rather use and iPad than a text book. What would you rather do? You can probably get an app for a text book on an iPad. Could you imagine the the space in your desk if you didn’t have a text book?”

“For the reasons of making it easier to work on things, helping with school work, getting kids used to the different electronics company’s are now producing, and prevention to global warming I think it is good for school to have electronics in there classrooms.”

On behalf of the Avon Maitland Parent Involvement Committee, I would like to invite you to attend the first Ignite Parents event ever held in Canada. Ignite Parents is an evening of quick and enlightening presentations in the field of education from educators, parents and students within our school board. Ignite Parents is our parent engagement initiative of the year and our goal is to engage, inspire and enlighten parents.

The idea to organize an Ignite Parents event came from the Ignite concept itself. Ignite is a community building speaking event hosted in cities all across the world where people gather to share their passions and ideas using 20 slides that auto advance every 15 seconds for a total of just 5 minutes. The motto of an Ignite event is: “Enlighten us, but make it quick!” We loved that idea and the unique format, so we decided to adapt the Ignite concept and narrow the focus and theme to education.

Ignite Parents promises to be a fun and exciting evening with inspiring presentations by passionate people. The event is free and open to all, there will be displays, plenty of great food, refreshments, door prizes, live music, a cash bar and of course, some fabulous presentations! For more information and to register for Ignite Parents you can visit our website at IgniteParents.ca  I hope you’ll join us at the Arden Park Hotel, Wednesday, May 2^nd from 7 to 9pm. And prepare to be engaged…prepare to be enlightened!

Over the past few years teachers have been embracing technology in the classroom to engage today’s tech savvy students. Two teachers, worlds apart, have taken it to the next level bringing students together for creative group collaboration via the internet.

The “Idea Hive”, created by teachers Heather Durnin of Turnberry Central Public School and Clarence Fisher of Joseph H. Kerr School in Snow Lake, Manitoba, brought two class rooms together from very different parts of the country.

United in cyberspace via skype and chat sessions, these grade 7/8 classes worked together creatively over the past year as part of an educational partnership that eventually resulted in the professional publication of their own book, “A Field Guide to Molching”. The book describes the Idea Hive, “As a classroom like no other where students from two provinces work together every day. This project is one of things that can happen when people re-imagine what school might be like.”

I say, no need to re-imagine…it’s here! Kudos to these innovative educators and students for taking their shared learning to a new, global level! View the full story on the makings of, “A Field Guide to Molching” here: