May is Mental Health Month, and once again the folks at Mental Health America have created a free Mental Health Month Toolkit that your PTA can use to raise awareness of mental health issues. This year’s toolkit, called Look Around, Look Within, is focused on how our surroundings affect our mental health. Topics addressed include … Continue reading Get Ready for Mental Health Month 2023
Plan Now for Screen-Free Week 2023
Screen-Free Week this year is May 1-7, 2023. The week is planned to give children and families time to do things together, play, go outside, and engage in other activities rather than staring at a screen. Your PTA can offer programs during Screen-Free Week to give families an activity-filled night during the week. The Screen-Free … Continue reading Plan Now for Screen-Free Week 2023
Take Your Family to School Week 2023
National PTA’s Take Your Family to School Week is designed to help families become more engaged in their child’s education and foster connections between families, teachers, and administrators. Take Your Family to School Week is held the week of PTA’s founding on February 17, 1897. This year, Take Your Family to School Week will be … Continue reading Take Your Family to School Week 2023
Living Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy
Last week, our country celebrated the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Amid all the social media posts mentioning the I Have a Dream speech and sharing other memorable quotes, we can lose sight of the challenge Dr. King put before everyone to do the hard work for peace and justice every day, … Continue reading Living Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy
Improve Your PTA’s Family Engagement in the New Year
Family engagement is critical to student success, and it plays a big role in your PTA’s success as well. National PTA has rolled out several new resources to help your PTA step up its family engagement efforts. National PTA recently released the latest update of the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships. Accompanying the release was … Continue reading Improve Your PTA’s Family Engagement in the New Year
The New Update of the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships
PTA’s National Standards for Family-School Partnerships were groundbreaking when they were first debuted. That families should be included in the conversations around their children’s education sounds like common sense today, but 20 years ago, the idea that families and schools should work together for student success was a novel idea. Now, National PTA has released … Continue reading The New Update of the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships
Support Your Families with PTA Programs
As more and more data comes in, it is increasingly clear that many students fell behind during the first year of the pandemic. One way to help students begin to catch up academically is through out-of-school learning opportunities. A recent report by Bellwether shows that families often find barriers to participation in these learning opportunities. … Continue reading Support Your Families with PTA Programs
Back-to-School Mental Health Toolkit
Today’s guest post is from Mental Health America, highlighting their new Back-to-School toolkit for children’s mental health. The toolkit contains fact sheets and social media items that your PTA can use to educate families and youth on children’s mental health issues. By now, most of us have read or seen stories on the youth mental … Continue reading Back-to-School Mental Health Toolkit
Transform Your PTA with the School of Excellence Program
Is your PTA struggling to find volunteers? Do your PTA meetings always have the same six people showing up? Are you finding it hard to engage all families in your school? Did you know that PTA has a program that will help your PTA address all those issues? The School of Excellence program has been … Continue reading Transform Your PTA with the School of Excellence Program
Team Up for Your Student’s Success
We’re big fans of Learning Heroes at Illinois PTA, not only for their fantastic family resources, but also for their enlightening research and commitment to meaningful family engagement. As the school year kicks off, Learning Heroes has launched their Ready to Team Up resources for families to help them partner with their child’s teacher for … Continue reading Team Up for Your Student’s Success
Parents 2022: Hidden in Plain Sight
Today’s guest post comes from Learning Heroes. We’ve highlighted their research and resources many times in the past. Their latest report, Parents 2022: Hidden in Plain Sight—A Way Forward for Equity-Centered Family Engagement, illustrates the opportunities for PTAs and schools to make significant progress on student success through meaningful family engagement. You can find the … Continue reading Parents 2022: Hidden in Plain Sight
Looking Beyond Illinois PTA for Resources
One of the great things about being a PTA is that you are never on your own. There are great resources available to you from both National PTA and Illinois PTA, and you always have an Illinois PTA person you can turn to for help. It’s easy to forget, however, that PTA is made up … Continue reading Looking Beyond Illinois PTA for Resources
Improving School-Family Communication and Engagement
One of the key focuses of effective family engagement is communication, so important that communicating effectively is the second of National PTA’s National Standards for Family-School Partnerships. The University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research has just released a research brief on the lessons learned during remote schooling about how to improve school-family communication. The … Continue reading Improving School-Family Communication and Engagement
Building Meaningful Family Engagement At Your School
Illinois PTA has focused on creating meaningful family engagement for years, as truly engaged families can make a significant difference in student success. National PTA recognizes its importance, too, having launched The Center for Family Engagement four years ago. Now, a new report from our friends at Learning Heroes further supports what PTA has been … Continue reading Building Meaningful Family Engagement At Your School
Introducing the Family STEAM Book
The Illinois PTA Local Unit Advocacy Toolkit wasn’t the only thing making its debut at the Illinois PTA Convention and Advocacy Conference. Illinois PTA also released the Family STEAM Book, a collection of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) activities for K-5 students that families can do at home or PTAs can use for … Continue reading Introducing the Family STEAM Book
Programs for Healthy Kids
Illinois PTA has long been a fan of Action for Healthy Kids, and recently, they updated their website and resources, including translating many of the resources into Spanish. If your PTA is looking for program ideas, the updated website has plenty for you. The resources are now split into three areas: NourishEd (hunger and nutrition)EnergizEd … Continue reading Programs for Healthy Kids
Parents 2021: Research Highlights Opportunity for Meaningful Family Engagement
Today’s guest post comes from Learning Heroes. We’ve highlighted their research and resources many times in the past. Their latest report, Parents 2021: Going Beyond the Headlines, illustrates the opportunities for PTAs and schools to make significant progress on student success through meaningful family engagement. You can find the slide deck, a short video, social … Continue reading Parents 2021: Research Highlights Opportunity for Meaningful Family Engagement
9 Family Engagement Strategies for Middle School PTAs
Family engagement is a lot easier at the elementary school level: kids want their parents around and events and programs are easy to come by. That changes with middle school and children beginning to assert their independence. As Illinois PTA has pointed out in the past, middle school PTAs can find success by focusing more … Continue reading 9 Family Engagement Strategies for Middle School PTAs
8 Grant Writing Tips for PTAs
Illinois PTA recently celebrated four local PTAs earning National PTA program grants. These PTAs received $1,000 from National PTA and program sponsors to help bring PTA programs on STEM, literacy, digital citizenship, mental health, and the arts to their school. Here are some tips to help your PTA prepare for the next round of National … Continue reading 8 Grant Writing Tips for PTAs
Right to Play and Your PTA
In our wrap-up of this spring’s legislative session, Illinois PTA noted the passage of SB654, the Right to Play Every Day bill that guaranteed every kindergarten through fifth grade student 30 minutes of “supervised, unstructured, child-directed play” every school day. Governor Pritzker has now signed the bill into law, and its requirements take effect immediately. If … Continue reading Right to Play and Your PTA