Saturday, October 31, 2015

PTA: Town Hall Format & Parent / Teacher Briefings

PTA: Town Hall Format & Parent / Teacher Briefings 

·         (module 2 activity 2)

     Structure, role, and duties or responsibilities of the members of the PTA/PTO or school board

In the school I have taught at we have two phases to our regular PTA meetings (which occur approximately every 2 months).  The first phase uses a classical town hall format where those in attendance were briefed on any issues pertinent to the school.  A Q&A time would, then, be opened up where anyone may raise their hand to ask questions or address concerns.  The principal of the school acted as the moderator during this first phase.

The second phase included teachers returning to their classrooms having prepared briefings for how each student is doing.  The parents would then go to each student’s first period, second period, third period, and fourth period classes, with the bell notifying when it was time for the parents to move to the next period.  Parents would wait in line to be called in and each briefing was around 5 minutes.  If the parent or teacher wanted to talk about the student more, they would schedule an appointment before or after school or during the teacher’s prep period.

·        Members role in planning and executing school policies and activities

Like any town hall meeting, the idea is to pool together the community’s intellect and creativity to solve problems and try to get people more actively involved.  The more involved parents are in the student’s life, the child’s chances of success are dramatically improved.

·        Importance of documents, handouts, and materials received in the meetings

During the town hall meeting, handouts were designed to stress all of the different learning opportunities that are available to the students.  Parents were encouraged to engage their children about getting involved in after-school activities such as sports, debate clubs, student lead organizations, additional tutoring, and the like as the parent sees fit. 

·        Strengths and weaknesses of the PTA/PTO or school board

The nuclear, grass-roots, community is absolutely fundamental to the education process.  We humans are born as collaborators—our survival and progress has always depended on the degree to which we are successful in pooling our collective capabilities for the better.  Encouraging healthy grass-roots collaboration is a bedrock of education, and I think our school has an environment of encouraging more engagement from everyone.

Of course. . . there is always that one easily exasperated, discontent, parent who can tend to bring the whole show down a notch.

·        Overall value of the PTA/PTO or school board as compared against formal or informal goals set for the group

PTA meetings are invaluable.  Most of the other male teachers I’ve worked with find them incredibly annoying and even cheesy.  Sure. . . I’m not gonna lie.  I’ve been tempted to roll my eyes a few times because the cheese is real.  But I simply do not know of any truly successful civilization that ever succeeded without having active, successful, collaboration.  In fact, the more they found ways of making use of one another’s talents, the more they flourished.

·        How Can I Become More Involved?  How Can Meetings Improve?


I think every teacher should have at least one extracurricular project that they both enjoy and care about.   I’ve found communicating with the parents effectively to explain why the student’s grade is what it is, is absolutely paramount to the child’s improvement or continued success.

Developing Higher Order Thinking

Developing Higher Order Thinking
            The development of higher order thinking in students is a primary goal for me.  It’s a big reason why I want to teach physics, general science, and mathematics.  I’ve always felt that this is an excellent depiction showing how higher order thinking works:



          One of the things I constantly try to do whenever I teach is to engage the students with key questions such as those listed in the pyramid.  Over time I’ve gotten a sense for being able to tell what level a student is at and what steps I can take to help the student progress to the next level of thinking about a concept.  One thing I wish we would re-enforce in teachers is how to evaluate which of these steps a student is at with a concept, and specific steps the teacher can take to progress the student toward the next level.  I think our ability to diagnose what level a student is at is crucial in helping us to develop an appropriately tiered, and creative, approach for the student.
           As one example, I’ve learned that if a student can predict what is going to happen in a class experiment even before it happens, then I know that student has reached the evaluate stage of learning.  And when I identify that a student has reached that evaluate stage (making sure it wasn’t just a lucky guess), I always look for some kind of project he can do so that he can move into the realm of practical application.  By applying his evaluative abilities in the realm of practical application, I know I am creating a future inventor and problem solver who sees, “why this stuff matters.”  This is extremely rewarding.
            I, personally, am a staunch preacher of the importance of training higher order thinking.  I advocate not only that teachers learn to be more sensitive to what level a student is at, but to try and be consistently conscious of developing tiered strategies that help the student progress to the next level; such as higher tier students mentoring lower tier students.  Not only does this sociabilize both students in a collaborative environment, but the lower tier student gets more personal attention and the upper tier student is able to have the concept re-enforced by re-teaching it himself. Another point to note, is that as one progresses into the higher tiers they become capable of answering more and more standardized test questions.  This is because knowing the answer to a question is different than knowing why the answer to a question is what it is.  If the student understands the reason for their answer, then they will be able to answer literally any other question on the test for which the exact same reasoning process applies to the solution.  So not only do we help the student progress toward the highest levels of understanding, but we also end up looking great, as teachers, on paper when the high stakes tests come around.

Works Cited

Francis, E. M. (2014). Maverik Education. Retrieved November 1, 2015, from
               http://maverikeducation.blogspot.jp/2014/03/what-exactly-is-thinking-curriculum.html