4th Week Web Conference - School Community Relations

Fantastic conference tonight.  I really felt like I got a lot out of listening to other people's ideas and their focus.  It is always interesting to see the different struggles we all face in different areas.  I love that Dr Jenkins will share with us what we missed on the mid term so we can check ourselves and learn from this.  I was also able to resolve my issue with the Course Embedded log...THANK YOU to Dr Cummings for working with me on this and to Dr Jenkins for passing this along.
Felt like tonight was a success and I will go to bed feeling like I accomplished a lot today!  :)

Attending the we conferences for our classes has normally been very useful!  I enjoy attending them and learning from other people.  However, in this class...School Community Relations....we seem to be drifting off course more often.  People are asking so many questions that are more related to obtaining our degrees but not the course in specific.  Also, people have been logging on late to the conference and then asking the same questions that have been asked several times earlier.  It would be helpful if they scroll through the chat log before asking questions.  I hope to continue on the conferences but want to focus on the class and reviewing the mid term and preparing for the final!

We have been reading so many articles about ways other schools have increased their parent involvement.  One common factor I am noticing, and it seems common sense, is that the teachers are on board.  I attended our CIDC meeting and our principal shared the poor results of her request last year for teachers to contact all parents at least once a nine weeks.  She stated it was SO DISHEARTENING to see the results.  This has me puzzled....you can't complain about parents not being involved if you, the teacher, don't reach out to them at all.  Our class sizes are NOT that large so that is not the case.  I am struggling internally as to how I would deal with this as a principal.  You can't throw down the hammer and demand it, but on the other hand it was a REASONABLE request.  I am trying to continue to soak in the info in these articles to see if I can come up with a different idea on how to get them moving! 

Lots has been happening since the start of school!  I feel like I am running and NEVER walking.  Regardless, we have accomplished a lot on the plan.  We were able to create our posters for the classrooms to track parent attendance at our events.  They looked great!  Our Meet The Teacher Night was good but our Open House was fantastic!  It was a rainy night but still had a packed house.  I had teachers from every grade level contacting their parents to come and it was very interesting to compare our results.  I am meeting with our Parent Liaison to review the final numbers.  Interesting point...I called all of my parents and had 15 out of 20 show!  I was pleased with this.  A colleague of mine, 5th bilingual class, called all of hers and had 7 out of 16 show!  Final note, another colleague who has many GT children, did NOT call and had 20 out of 23 show!  I will be back to share more official results but our entire focus is to increase their involvement.  So far, I am seeing better results than last year and hope this trend continues!