Sunday, March 21, 2010

Using PTA organizations to increase aspects of multiculturalism in education

Some PTAs are using the relationship between parents and teachers to bring interesting multicultural ideas into the classrooms. In a North Carolina school, a teacher and a parent worked together to earn a grant to purchase books about topics of ethnic diversity. Other schools' PTAs have also earned large amounts of money to purchase books about topics of multiculturalism and diversity. After reading one of the books, some of the students in the N.C. school then raised enough money to buy livestock to help families in other countries. As a teacher, I can only imagine what sorts of topics I would feel comfortable introducing to my students if I had helpful resources such as the books the PTAs worked to secure for those teachers. I know that my students learn the most when we are able to reference books on the particular topic at hand. Some of the parents in the PTA at my school were discouraged by the fact that only two or three teachers attended any of the PTA meetings. They wanted to raise money to help support our endeavors in our classrooms, but since most teachers didn't participate in the meetings, they weren't sure what to do. They asked our principal to ask us to give them proposals about things we'd like the PTA to purchase. When he let us teachers know about this, I was very excited. I immediately researched some of the science resources I had been wanting for my classroom. I submitted a proposal to the PTA, and assumed all other teachers were doing the same time. I later found out that I was the only teacher to have done so. The parents in the PTA received such a meager and unenthusiastic response from the teachers that future fundraising efforts were aimed at supporting PTA events, not individual teachers' classrooms. I like to think that if there were greater teacher participation in the PTA, such miscommunication and misunderstandings would be avoided. Teachers and parents would work together to identify the school's needs and then to solve them together.

Article: http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/57-build-a-multicultural-pto

3 comments:

  1. That's very interesting. I didn't realize the PTA was so poorly attended and poorly supported by teachers. I think you are right, if teachers were more supportive of the PTA’s request for ideas, then the PTA would be more enthusiastic about supporting them. I think it’s a cyclical problem. The less teachers respond, the less parents will want to support…the less supportive parents are, the less teachers will want to work with them. It seems like the challenge is to break the cycle on the teachers’ side and get them more involved, since the PTA most recently put out the effort. If the PTA sees a genuine enthusiasm from teachers, it will create an enthusiasm among parents.

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  2. I agree! We are hoping that we can convince principals to encourage at least one teacher per grade level to attend all PTA meetings and events. This way, they will start "breaking the cycle" and hopefully parents will increase their involvement as well!

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  3. It has been my experience from PTA meetings that many parents use these forums to air grievances and to talk about individual problems with their own child. I have stopped going to them as a parent for this reason....and perhaps this is why many teachers do not attend as well. Maybe the whole format of these meeting needs to be changed- Questions could be submitted beforehand, head of school could address pressing issues in a thoughtful way- no one would be put on the spot. Also, I think it would be a great idea if teachers could receive some sort of compensation for attending the meetings.

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