Mobile Parental Involvement

One of our main focuses for the year is increasing our parental involvement. So far, we’ve done a pretty good job. Our parents are starting to feel more welcome coming to school for activities and being present in the classrooms. That’s a good start, but we must keep going.

Last week, we hosted a Prek-2nd Math Family Night where over 35 families spent the evening playing math games and learning about online and apps for their mobile devices. Truly, it was a powerful event. But as I looked around the room, I couldn’t help but notice the families that attend these type of events are typically aren’t the ones we’re trying to desperately to reach. Not that we don’t want to reach all parents – you know what I mean.

I thought popped into my head. What if we took our family nights mobile?

Currently, we service 3 apartment complexes within our school zone. What if we packed up our Math Parent Night supplies and held it in the apartment complex “clubhouse” room instead of at school? What if we went to where the parents and students are instead of always asking them to come to us?

What if?

While it sounds promising and easy enough, it won’t work without teacher buy-in. So as I ponder these possibilities for the second semester, we will work towards creating the buy-in we need to accomplish such a task. I truly don’t believe it will be difficult to do. We have a great staff with a “whatever it takes” mentality.

All I know is if we keep doing what we've always done - we'll continue to get what we've always gotten. It's time to try a new approach. Definitely looking forward to more what ifs!

First Ever Tweet-Chat

Yesterday life slowed down a bit for me. I was home with my little one who was sick. While it's always hard to be away from the office, I did enjoy the slower pace of the day. While cruising through my Twitter feed on the couch, I came upon a tweet-chat occuring that evening on the topic of Daily 5 in the classroom. Being that we've just recently implemented Daily 5 campus-wide this year, I thought it might be of interest to me to check out this tweet-chat.

Mind you, I might use Twitter a lot, but sure didn't know what this tweet-chat was going to be about.

I tuned in at 7:00 CST and searched the chat hashtag #D5chat. What I found was a online collaborative of teachers from across the nation, I mean continent - discussing topics relating to implementing writing during their Daily 5 time. These ladies were sharing ideas, topics and resources all through a simple 140 character twitter feed.

Now, I would've loved to participate fully in the #D5chat, but it took me a little bit to get the hang of things. I did share a resource for writing, but what I gained was so much more. And it all archived here.

I learned there is so much more to Twitter than just posting - it's about creating an online collaborative network where you can share, talk and lean on one another. That's exactly what these ladies were doing. I'm committed to seeking out administrators on twitter and find some chats that will directly impact my leadership and learning.