Back to School Night...Will My Extra Work Be Worth It?

Tomorrow night is BTS night. The purpose is for the parents to come see their child's classroom, meet the teacher, see the resources and ask any questions that they may have. It's usually a pretty fun time for both teacher and parent ( and the kids loooooove to bring their parents into their classrooms.)

BTS nights in the past have usually been pretty low-key for me. I set up the room so the parents can wander around, I give a quick over-view of what my expectations are and I invite questions. I haven't put a lot of work into it before now because I never really got much of a showing. Most parents in my district have to work at night or they don't have a car or they're afraid to come to school or they're just not interested enough to get down there.

I decided this year was going to be different. This was the year I was going to get more participation from my parents and that's going to be the difference in my kids' performance. I've got a pretty tough group now so I can use all the help I can get.

Together with my student teacher, I created a "Back to School Night" powerpoint presentation to show the parents. I even sent it to Kevin's work and he had a co-worker translate it for me so I have something for the Spanish speaking parents. I'm really excited about it. There's nothing on it that I didn't tell the parents about in past years, but I hope my enthusiasm rubs off and more parents come, more parents get involved in their kids' education and I set a good example for my poor, naive student teacher who thinks I do this every year and I just lost it because I got a new computer over the summer.

I'll let you know how it goes. For the past 3 years, I've gotten about 5 parents show up from my entire class. I'm hoping to at least double that tomorrow: I'll be happy if 10 show up.

I'll keep you posted.