Family Night

Wow...it has been a while since I have had a chance to post. School is a very busy place right now. Luckily, everyone seems to be falling in to their routines. We have begun district testing called MAP that allows teachers to learn what skills their students have and how they can serve them most effectively. I am still trying to hire a couple of positions. One teacher and one assistant - this has been the never-ending carousel!
On to the subject of today's post.
In the past, the school has hosted numerous activities for students and parents at night. There was a club for PreK and Kindergarten students. There was a club for 1st-5th grade students. The PTO also held meetings. These groups met frequently throughout the year on different nights. While talking to all staff members this summer, I heard many of them say how disappointed they were in the parent turnout at all of these meetings. They thought the content of the meetings was great, but the amount of people that came to each one was nothing to cheer about. I understood the plight of parents in regards to this. If they had a student in the PreK group and another in the 1st-5th grade group and they wanted to be active in the PTO, then they were expected to be at school 3 nights each month - in addition to other night activities such as award's dinners, etc. This was a great deal of time for parents to commit to the school.
This year we decided to combine the three groups into one big quarterly activity called "Family Night". The PreK and Kindergarten group, 1st-5th grade group and PTO were able to hold one single meeting with alot of activities for families, serve everyone a free dinner and do it all in one night! There was some skepticism to doing it this way. The way I saw it was that many more parents could commit to one night a quarter and we could make this a great event!
We focused on literacy and offered parents some tips on reading with students; we had PreK and Kindergarten students explore literacy through music; we had family activities in math, science, art and technology. And every child received a book!
We had about 500 respond that they were coming, but actually had about 300 show up. We were ecstatic at all of the participation. Everyone enjoyed themselves, learned some new things and enjoyed dinner. The number of participants was far greater than any of the events in the past. We look forward to our family night in November that will focus on wellness.
A special "thank-you" goes to our Reading Recovery teacher and to our PreK teacher for all of their hard work organizing the event. Thanks to all the teachers who took part in making this a great evening of learning and fun!