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We hope you’ll be inspired by these family involvement event ideas from 2009 PTA Take Your Family to School Week Award recipients.* We were!
If you take your family to school, they’ll come to your math class. Once they’ve gone to math class, they’ll want to come back for reading class. Then they’ll want to join you for lunch, and probably recess too. That was the hope behind Ramstein American Middle School PTSA’s week of events, inspired by If You Take a Mouse to School, by Laura Numeroff. For family members deployed downrange, this Department of Defense Dependents School in Germany looked to its video production class to film the activities, with students of deployed parents as narrators, so DVDs of the event could be sent in care packages.
When parents visit College View School in Glendale, California, their presence distracts the students, all of whom have severe cognitive and/or physical disabilities. That makes it difficult for parents to truly observe their children working in class. The PTA’s solution: “A Day in the Life of College View School”—a film showing students’ daily interactions with their teachers and therapists at school, plus teacher interviews offering additional insights. The final 28-minute cut was screened at a spaghetti dinner, where teachers answered questions and parents had a chance to socialize. The result: “This project has brought people together and generated new energy,” says College View School PTA President Andrea Crissman.
At Lakewood Falls Elementary School in Plainfield, Illinois, family teams participated in an “amazing race” through the school, following clues about the school from location to location and solving curriculum-based challenges at each stop. For the school’s Hispanic families, the PTA translated all the clues and challenges into Spanish. Other PTAs, like Tulsa Street Elementary PTA in Granada Hills, California, also took their cues from popular TV shows; they challenged parents to find out if they were “smarter than a 5th-grader,” gave their school grounds an “extreme makeover,” enlisted families in “CSI” (Community Service Inc.), and more.
At Pineview Elementary in West Columbia, South Carolina, each grade held its own event for parents. Parents of 4th-graders were invited to join their children in science class to observe the weather, make clouds out of cotton balls, and label the clouds. First-graders hosted an author’s tea, where they shared stories they’d written and served tea and cookies to their guests.
Startzville Elementary PTA in Canyon Lake, Texas, partnered with its school’s parent resource center to offer parent learning workshops.
Bristol Elementary School and PTA in Colorado Springs, Colorado, followed up a cross-discipline study unit on African arts and culture with “Uzuri Afrika Ugunduzi” (Beautiful African Creations), an evening integrating arts, education, and parent involvement. Through drum beats, dancing, and suzuki violin—all performed by students—as well as displays of student artwork, the event showed families what their kids had been learning. Open to the entire community, the event also let families sample African cuisine, make crafts, and listen to an African storyteller.
Thirty-five languages are spoken amongst Mantua Elementary School students, enriching the Fairfax, Virginia, school but also creating barriers to involvement. With a multicultural panel discussion, the PTA gave parents an opportunity to discuss their own school experiences and created a venue for parents and teachers to share with each other their views and expectations regarding education. Ken Moles, secretary (2008–2009) for Mantua Elementary PTA, reported that “Several of the teachers have expressed a better understanding of students’ home lives due to the parent panel discussion.”
Parents and community members started kids thinking about their futures early with interactive booths—as well as a fire truck and a coal truck—at the Purchase Line North Elementary PTA career fair in rural Mahaffey, Pennsylvania.
Families at Chester Elementary School in Chester, New York, exercised their mathematical and communication skills with hands-on activities like Domino Switch Dance, Fraction Action, Keep the Change, Decimal Dilemma, and Triangle Matchmaker during the PTA’s Math Family Fun Night for grades 3 to 5. The games were directly linked to the New York state standards in mathematics, and take-home kits provided materials to help parents support their children’s learning at home.
*Stories based on PTA applications and evaluations.
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