Paying Attention
Brent Beasley, CEO of Fort Worth Education Partnership, speaks with guests about topics such as education, current events, Fort Worth, and the paths that led them to where they are now.
Paying Attention
Fort Worth ISD PTA Impact Mentorship Program
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Brent talks to FWISD PTA leaders Marisol Herrera and Taylor Duncan about the FWISD Council of PTA's IMPACT Mentorship Program, a program with the goal strategically sharing resources, expertise, and volunteer power across FWISD district to strengthen the foundation for all children to thrive.
Find more information about the FWISD PTA Impact Mentorship Program at: https://www.fwisdpta.org/impact
Welcome to Paying Attention Podcast. I'm Brent Beasley. I lead Fort Worth Education Partnership. The title of the podcast comes from a Mary Oliver poem that's called Instructions for Living a Life. And it's a very short poem. It's Instructions for Living a Life. Pay Attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. And so I'm inviting people to be my guests on this podcast who I think we need to be paying attention to and who have something to say about the education landscape in particular in Fort Worth. And so today I'm very pleased to have Mary Sol Herrera and Taylor Duncan as our guests. And they are two people who are worth paying attention to in their own right. And also you two are involved with something that I think is really worth paying attention to in Fort Worth right now, which is the impact mentorship program with the Fort Worth ISD Council of PTAs. And so I just want to jump right in on that with the two of you. First of all, thanks for doing this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_01For being here. Yeah. So, like what can you first of all just explain what is this impact program and what your roles are with that?
SPEAKER_02So initially, Taylor and I met and we started thinking about the idea of this impact mentorship program. It's actually brand new. We just started it. This is our first pilot year.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we met about a year ago, uh formally met this month in May. May of or yeah, roughly.
SPEAKER_02Last year. Last year. So essentially, I at the time and still was involved with the Fort Worth ISD Council of PTAs. And so what the Fort Worth ISD Council does is we basically look over all of the local PTAs on, you know, the Fort Worth ISD campuses. Um and our role is mostly like helping them out, answering questions, you know, putting them in touch with resources, things with the Texas PTA that are above us. So that's how Taylor reached out to me because you know, she had my contact. She was um, you were the local treasurer. And so she reached out to me that way. And I I was at the time the vice president, and so we started talking about, you know, some ideas that she had, and I'll let you tell a little bit more about that idea, but that's how that's how the whole program got started. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I had served um my kids' school, local elementary school in my neighborhood. We got involved in PTA when they entered school. And um, we live in a neighborhood where there's five schools within very short proximity, and we all share the same community center. So, because of kids, we got I got to know other parents at other schools and got connected to how some of the other PTAs were doing. Our PTA has historically, at my kids' elementary school, has been really small, um, had met some basic needs and functions, but has historically been a pretty, pretty small organization where some of the other schools that my kids were friends, you know, that were their friends attended, had much bigger budgets. They were doing more for their community, just a little bit more um robust support of their schools. So I started asking questions and I was like, how do y'all do this? How do you do this? Um, you know, where where are you getting funding for this? How do you how do you facilitate um, you know, volunteers? And several years ago, the the five schools that are in the near south side formed came together to uh try to just collaborate and share best practices, share ideas. One one of the things that, you know, with the the finances were a very large disparity. Um and there were a couple of the schools who had more money than they could spend on their school. And as a nonprofit, you're supposed to spend everything that you raise, but they just had really robust funding uh traditions that just you know kept kept going. And there was a desire to sh to give some money to the other, to the other smaller PTAs who had needs they didn't have funding to meet. And we realized you can't do that. You can't from one, you can't fundraise for one nonprofit and give and give to another without meeting, you know, general, it had to be approved in the budget and all kinds of stuff. So long story short, we um to help kind of at least from the funding standpoint level the playing field some, we did a joint fundraiser. We did a back to public school bash at our local community center. Um, I get like emotional thinking about this because it was such a great community uh moment where these, you know, five schools who everybody cares so much about their local school community, um, but were really looking beyond just their own school and trying to figure out like how do we help the kids over there, how do we help the families over there? Because we're all part of one larger family, um, one larger community. And uh it was really successful. We did it for two years. We did this joint fundraiser where we shared the funds to the schools who needed it most, those who didn't didn't didn't take part. Um, and that kind of core group stayed in communication for for a few years, not just sharing funds, but also sharing volunteers. Like, hey, we need people to come work this book fair. We don't have enough parents because it's all working parents, it's during the week. Um, you know, who can who can kind of work this book fair? And there was probably 10 of us on a text thread that just for several years kind of kept supporting one another. Um, but uh NPTA, as roles change, people, you know, their kids go on to middle school or or new presidents, new treasurers come in. Um we wanted to figure out a way to keep that going and to look beyond just our neighborhood. And how could we, there's got to be a need for this beyond just the South Side, the near South Side, and to other parts of the city. And so that's when um I was like, well, there's the council of PTAs, I'll reach out there. And uh I had met Marisol at an advocacy day in Austin. Um, and so I cold emailed her and asked her to coffee.
SPEAKER_01That's great. I love that you shared that because that it's really at the core of what I understand this program is about is noticing that disparity among different schools. You wanted to try to figure out a way to help and you found there was a barrier there, so now y'all are trying to address that through this.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I wasn't the only one. You had been, it was just kind of serendipitous. A couple different people had reached out in a similar time frame.
SPEAKER_02So before I became vice president, I served as president of the fourth ISD council for two years. And during those two years as president, this was an ongoing sort of idea that I had that I was like, how can we increase equity across our district? I mean, when I came in as a president, I set that as my goal. I was like, we're gonna increase equity across our district, knowing that these disparities, you know, exist. This is something that has existed in our district, right? May I say just PTAs in general across our state, right? Right, right. It's like uh within the Fort Worth ISD, if we're just gonna focus on here, you know, we have, and we all know this, we have some schools that just have the infrastructure where they can do a lot of fundraising, where they can do a lot of these things where people are plugged in, and then we have other sides of our district where that's just not the case for whatever reason, right? There's lots of reasons. Right. Um, and it's very, very complex. But I kept thinking like we have the structure here, at least within the PTA, right? Where we can try to do something with this. Like the structure's in place, the resources are in place, the people are in place. Like, if we can just find a way to leverage this, right? So for two years I was bouncing different ideas around, I tried different things, didn't get a lot of traction. I remember I started like a mentoring program actually, uh, my first year, but it was hard to get to find the people who were interested in doing that and then find the ways to make that sustainable. We might get one-offs where you would like meet with somebody and like share some information. But like Taylor was saying, is like, how can we keep this? How can we scale this and how can we make it sustainable? That's kind of like where I kept hitting the wall. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Can maybe can we talk about some of the ways like that schools benefit from the resources that the PTAs, the money that they raise, like how is that actually impacting some schools are getting these benefits and some are not?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, when I my because Mariselle's got a high schooler, um, and so has been in the public school system longer than I have as a parent. Um, and I had this view of PTA that is very different than what I've actually experienced before getting involved in it. And you can speak more to a lot of yeah, more robustly what PTA does. But I think for what most people don't understand is it is a mechanism, a partnership between parents and the school and then community. You don't just have to be parents, it can be neighbors, grandparents, any any community that is invested in the in the support of a school and of all students in that school to meet the needs of that that school community more robustly than often the funding and the support from the district can and more nimbly. It's just you can act a lot faster. Um and from little things like one of the first fundraisers that that our school took on that I was a part of is we provide coats, we make sure every kid has a coat. And so the teachers help identify students that, as the weather is getting chilly or don't have coats, and the PTA would go and buy and make sure that everybody had one. Um that was really the main fundraiser for many years. That's where most of our money went, because that's all the money we had was to make sure that students had coats. Um, it then morphed into other financial things that we were doing, like we bought a PA system because we had this beautiful auditorium and just wonderful music programs and no way to hear it, um, to other things like facilitating, you know, field day and selling concessions and um programs for the parents to learn things. But what are what are some of the other main things that impactful things that PTA does?
SPEAKER_02So I think what you said there, the fact that they have that flexibility to provide a lot of things is is really key. Um I actually just finished my master's in public school building leadership, so I got a deeper understanding because I was a classroom teacher for about 10 years, and then I moved out of the classroom and became a specialist. But now I'm trying to be a campus leader, right? So I got a little bit of an insight as to like how is it that just all of these resources are allocated in the first place? And the thing that I think a lot of parents and just community members don't realize is that there's so many rules and policies and things that campus leaders have to follow and the way that they allocate resources, right? So there could be a situation just, and this is something that I run across to a lot when I'm helping local like elementary schools, for example. The parents will come together and say, like, hey, we're we're gonna have this meeting, we're gonna have this event, da da da. Can the principal just buy uh food for everybody? Like, we just we just want to have some food available for people to come. The answer most of the time is no, they can't. Why not? Right? It's like so there's this like tension, it's like they don't understand, like, why can't they? Doesn't the school district have the money? Doesn't the principal have the money? But it's like being able to understand, it's like the the money is there, but it's like allocated for something else, and like the mechanism in place for how to access that gets complicated once the school year starts going, right? So that is what PTAs have is that flexibility.
SPEAKER_01Now we had a situation I'm just thinking of a couple of years ago where a school asked us, the fourth education partnership, could you pay for balloons and food for a teacher appreciation lunch that we're having? We have the money, but we we can't spend it on that for some reason. They I don't remember what the reason was, and it was not very much money at all, but they we they asked us to pay for it because they just couldn't.
SPEAKER_04Was it the school or was it the school?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the school.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they don't have right. Yeah. The thing is though, and I want to make this clear before we go, it's not just about funding. Right, right. Um, it is one of the things that PTA can help with, and we do have a little bit more flexibility. We do have our own policies and our own structures that we have to follow. But um the funding aspect of it really is to meet any gaps and any needs that there might be, right? And so we really, as the council, we help local PTAs plan that out ahead of time and say, look, look at your community, look at what the needs are, and then make a plan so that you're fundraising for a reason. And I think this is where it gets a little bit tricky with the fundraising, right? Because a lot of some schools, not a lot, but some schools just fundraise.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so they have this kind of extra, and like Taylor said, sometimes it's just tradition.
SPEAKER_04It's like we always do this fundraiser and we just started, it probably started as a because we have these needs, but now it's become part of that community's tradition. It's just they look forward to the annual the gala, the whatever.
SPEAKER_01Kids went to high school at Pascal, it was an annual thing, the big silent auction liquid. Everybody got dressed up and spent lots of money on all kinds of things that were donated.
SPEAKER_02Which is like it's a great event, but at a certain point, it's like once you're fundraising so much and you don't really have a need for it on your campus, there are plenty of other campuses that have you have a surplus, right? Um so we we try to really be clear about that. It's like you should have you should be fundraising for specific need. Um, and then of course, if you're a brand new PTA, your needs greatly outweigh your ability to fundraise resources. And so this is where we're like, how can we how can we do the the resource matching a little bit so that we can uh drive more equity? But the other big part of what PTAs provide is leadership development for parents and then programs. We have a lot of resources at the state level that we can provide to locals where we're like, you're not just fundraising, you're providing information, you're providing leadership development, we're doing advocacy at the state level. So it's like we want to make sure that all of those things continue. But again, put yourself back in the mindset of a brand new, really small group of parents who just started. If you barely have money or the ability to buy snacks for a meeting to bring people to the campus, just to even talk about a program or an advocacy, like these things are just really hard to do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. To learn more about Fort Worth Education Partnership, check out our website, FortworthEP.org. And we are on Instagram at Fort WorthEP. So we're talking about um PTA, Parent Teacher Association. I'm remembering as we're talking that my parents were the presidents of the PTA of my elementary school at some point along the way. Um, but let's just kind of go back to basics a little bit and talk about what is a PTA and what what role does it play in the school, both for the school but also for the development of parents as leaders. And because I think that's a part of a big part of what y'all are trying to do with this impact program.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sure. So um I'd like to tell the story of Dolores Huerta Elementary. So um I think it's a really nice story that I like to tell about how we started the PTA there. Because when I first came to Fort Worth ISD, um I came with Teach for America, actually. I was a core member. And my placement school was Dolores Huerta Elementary in the north side. And at the time, they didn't really have a parent group when I started there. And uh during my first year teaching there, the principal actually came and talked to me. And she's like, hey, could you help a group of parents get a PTA started? And for me, PTA, I was just like, the what? Yeah. Uh growing up, uh, my parents were not involved in any of those things. Um, I actually was a student in Fort Worth ISD. I don't know if they even had a PTA at the time, but again, that was not something my parents were involved with. So my parents, you know, they worked full-time, my mom had two jobs. If there was a parent-teacher conference, my mom was like, Are you passing? Are you good? I'm like, good. She's like, let me just sign the paper. You know, that that was it. Um, as long as we weren't in trouble, like my parents didn't really have to show up at the school. So to me, the this idea of a PTA, I think, and I think Taylor and I talked about this, like, is like, is it nothing? Exactly.
SPEAKER_04I thought it was like fake sales and stay-at-home parents who are just you know, like room parents going on field trips. I don't know. I yeah. That was my pre-conceived notion too. Like, I think a lot of people have this idea. Which are great things, but it's so much more than that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they have this idea that it's like, oh, it's for you know, those moms who can you know, just be at the school like making cookies or whatever. Um, and so when you know, when she she asked me about this, my first year teacher here, I was like, uh I don't really have it. I don't, I mean, I had a son, I was a mom, and he was at the Lotus Worth Elementary. Like, I had brought him with me. He was a kindergartner there, but I was like, I don't, I don't know about this, right? And then she's like, no, you'll be fine. A lot of people in PTA just get voluntary, right? Like, you'll be fine, you got this. And so I started doing my research, and you know, I found out like, okay, what is what is this organization? I like to just kind of be knowledgeable about what I'm gonna do before I start doing it, right? So I did a lot of research, went online, da-da-da-da-da-da. And I was like, oh, okay, so it's like a parent, teacher, and community member group. Yeah. And I I was like, I'm a teacher at the Lores Huerta, and I'm a parent at Dolores Huerta. I'm like, I think this could probably, you know, I could probably do this. And so at the time, it was literally just three other moms and myself. And we didn't really have, like, we just we just went at it. Like I brought the, I remember printing out the stuff from the internet, being like, this is this is from Texas PTA, this is let's just follow the rules. Let's, these are the bylaws, you know, we went through them, we read them together. Um, I had to do a lot of translating at the time because back then, this was back in 2013, uh, they still hadn't been really good about providing Spanish language resources. They're really good about it now. We have a lot of Spanish language resources through Texas PTA. But I had to do a lot of translating, you know, and and just kind of explaining like this is the process for how we get things done. And I remember being really just, I wanted to make sure we did it the right way. Like I was like, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this the right way, right? Um, after the first year or so, you know, once we got the structures established, I kind of changed my approach because I was like, what we really need is people that want to do this, that want to be involved. So this is really more about building relationships, right? And at the time, I think I was lucky that I was just in the right place where I could build a lot of really strong relationships with the staff because I wasn't a new employee there. They started to get to know me. By then I was in year two, year three, they knew me, my son was there, I knew the parents, you know, I knew the parents of the kids that I taught. So I was like, I can leverage a lot of these people through the relationships that I have and just say, hey, we're doing this thing, you want to help, you know, and and I think it was a lot easier for them to come in because they knew me and because they knew like I wasn't gonna, you know, put them in a spot that they that they couldn't, you know, do whatever it was. And so I was like, together, we started over the years, every year, every year, every year, just kind of learning together, learning the different positions. Like, what does it mean to be a president of the PTA? And they kept trying to nominate me for president. I was like, guys, there's a two-year limit. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02And so I was like, somebody else has to step up. They're like, no, we can. I was like, you can do this. Like, I learned it, like I'm still here. I'm I'm still, I'm not just like checking out, like I'll I'll take another role, like I'll do something else. But that is how we started building parent and teacher leaders because there's a lot of other teachers too that wanted to be involved, but they weren't sure, like, do we just like because I have a full-time teaching job? That's a lot on my plate. I was like, look, this is not about having, you know, having to be here all the time. We made it basically accessible for everybody to plug in in whichever way they they could feel like they could plug in. Um, I'm happy to say after the 10 years that I was there at Dolores Huerta, it became a really high functioning uh PTA. It's one of our highest functioning PTAs. There, they now have over 200 members. Um, their budget went from like, I think we started with like $400. And now, you know, they have $20,000 that they can use. You know, so it's it's it's been a really cool journey just to see how we can bring in the parents, bring in the teachers, and everybody kind of benefits from the situation. But more than anything, how they start learning, you know, the different things. It just opens up a lot, of course.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, uh the my shorter story, but another example, we got involved because my kids came home as pre-K little my oldest are twins, just in tears because they had missed some theme day, some I don't know, cowboy day or something. And and we were like, sweetie, we didn't know, we just didn't know. And I ended up calling the school and and asked, you know, hey, am I we missed this? Um, I never saw like a flyer for it. I we, you know, how as a new parent, how are we supposed to know about this? And we're like, oh, you're supposed to follow our Facebook page. I'm like, didn't even know you had a Facebook page. Um, and so one of the things that any sort of parent organization, PTA, is just one version. There's PTOs, which are just they're their own independent, just not affiliated. PTA is a national, then state, then council level structure. Um, there's booster clubs, any of these, you know, organizations that bring families in coordination with the school. Um, I don't know the hard stats on it, but I have to imagine that they they result in stronger, you know, engagement and support and hopefully outcomes for those students in those schools. And so when I gave the feedback. To sweet assistant principal at the time, that I didn't even, this would be helpful information to know as a new parent to the school, that these are the primary methods of communication for parents. And she's like, that's a great idea. Would you like to be on our PTA board? And um, and so that that honestly communication between the school community, the school professionals, right, the teachers, the admin, I think have really great intent and sometimes don't realize that there's a gap in communication to the parents. And so by having a formal organization made up of people from within the school, you know, both the admin, the teachers, and the parents, we meet. Um, the board meets once a month. We have four general meetings for every, you mentioned 200 at Dolores Huerta, um, two general meetings each semester. It is, it just creates the formalized forum for the parents and the community members and the and the um staff to come together to say, you know, what up what's going well, what needs do we have, you know, to ask questions. Um it it's created a lot more, it gets the it gets the parents on campus, you know, like there's there's so many, so many benefits that a parent organization.
SPEAKER_01And I love this idea that I hadn't thought about as much as just developing parents as leaders. Yeah. What an important role that is. So I think both of what y'all just described in your own experience is really what what y'all did there is what the impact program is really trying to do at a at scale. So can you kind of describe? I'm not sure we've really totally exactly described what y'all are going to do exactly with the impact program.
SPEAKER_02So once we got it going off the ground, um we really identified three big buckets um that we were going to be focused on. Funding we've already spoken about at length, and that was one.
SPEAKER_04Like how can we, you know, get funds to the schools that where their need is bigger than their than their what they have.
SPEAKER_02And of course, because of all the ways that PTA has the rules, like we have to bring it to the council level. So funding is one. The next one was uh volunteer base. Yeah. Right? Because sometimes it's not about we need some funding, we just need people, you know, we need people to come to help to volunteer, and if people have full-time jobs or they just so how can we get the people power where it's needed across the district? And then the last one, which to me I was like really that was my my jam. I was like, I'm most excited about the mentorship aspect of it. The know-how. The know-how, because it's like, I think it's important not just to say, okay, here's a check for, you know, da da da, so you can get that off the ground, or here's we're gonna send you 10 people to do that one event. That's great, and that that is helpful. But over time, what I found was most helpful, even you know, with my experience at Dolores Huerta, is like I'm not gonna be there forever. Um, I I can't be there forever. Um, but I need to make sure that the people who are going to continue this to make this sustainable have the knowledge, have the experience, have um just the know-how and the confidence to get the resources that they need moving forward, and then to turn around and teach other people. Um, and so then we we thought about this mentorship aspect of it. And now moving forward, and one of the things we're gonna talk about this summer is like every time somebody requests, whether it's funding or volunteers, like how are we going to put an attached mentorship to that as well? Yeah, um, and I started doing that a little bit more in the second half of the school year this year, where it was like you don't have to formally just request mentorship, whatever you request help from us in any way, yeah. I'm gonna attach mentorship along with it. Right.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we have this, I don't know, this vision, Fort Worth is it's is at such a Fort Worth ISD, such an interesting chapter. Uh and and very acutely everyone is focused on the areas of improvement that we have to make as a district. And um, I think that the parent and community involvement can can be a catalyst to help the educators get the outcomes that that we need to see. And how great would it be to have every campus in Fort Worth ISD have a robust community support system? Um PTA is just one one version. That's it's a it's the most common, I think, um that already exists, what and we had a connection to it. But we are the Impact Mentorship Program Um isn't just restricted to PTAs. If there are PTOs or other parent engagement uh organizations that want help, we want to help them. Our our our hope and and vision is that every campus across the district would have the wraparound support that it needs. And she is an educator, I'm not. Um I got involved because I think educators are wonderful. And I'm like, how can I help you? Because I can't raise my kids, I can't, I can barely raise my kids, I can't teach them. Um and yeah, I think that the whether it's and what's been most encouraging has been encouraging, I'll say most encouraging, is the the momentum that we've seen over the last year hasn't as much come from other PTAs, like what my that origin story that I told you about in the Near South side was PTAs working together. It hasn't so much come from that, it's come from the wider Fort Worth community. And that's really encouraging. I think we'll continue. It it's it's like a flywheel, you got to push really hard and slow in the beginning to get certain things moving within um, maybe within the other PTAs. But we've got we've had such wonderful reception at the the business community, the philanthropic community, um, non-parents who just are paying attention to education right now on how can they support their local schools. Um and we're just trying to leverage because PTA is already has so much infrastructure in place. How do we leverage the existing infrastructure to give people the know-how? You just need people sometimes. You just need people to show up. Maybe we can talk about how people can get involved because that that was probably in our this was our first year, right? We just tested some things, we had lots of small wins, we identified places this summer that our board is gonna, our committee is gonna dig into and figure out what we can tweak for next year. Um the funding has shown up in a in a big way. That's been great. I think we've got good momentum there. We know how to build on that. The mentorship part uh has been really impactful. The volunteer part is is a we that's an area we we can make some progress, and anybody in Fort Worth can can help support there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about how if people wanted to be supportive in some way of what y'all are doing, they hear this and think they want to help. How can they do that? How can they know about it and what can they do?
SPEAKER_02For sure. And I think one thing Taylor said earlier is very important to underscore again, you do not have to have a child in the school or in the school district to be a part of PTA or to be part of the impact mentorship program help or anything like that. Like the wider community is what we're trying to mobilize right now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um we have our website right now, it's through the Fort Worth ISD Council of PTAs. Um, so the Fort Worth ISD Council of PTA's website is www.fwisdpta.org. And then if you go to that, that's the main page. There's gonna be a little tab at the top that says impact, you click on that.
SPEAKER_04In all caps. Impact in all caps, camp ass.
SPEAKER_02And in that page, that's where you can click, like, oh, I want to donate. Like, if you're like, I just want to donate money and help out the cost, you can do that. Um, or like I want to volunteer, which is what we really need right now. Like, hey, how can I help? Um, you know, I can donate some of my time. It doesn't have to be anything long-term. We basically just take your information, what's your availability? And then whenever we have a request, we just start contacting people. It's like, hey, we need somebody on Thursday afternoon from four to five. Like, are you available? So we'll always check them.
SPEAKER_04That's okay. Yeah. And if you are, great.
SPEAKER_00To learn more about the Fort Worth ISD Council of PTAs, check out their website, fwisdPta.org slash impact.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so when you talk about volunteers, what would be the kinds of things that people might be doing if they're volunteering?
SPEAKER_02So there's lots of requests that we've had this year already, and it's anything from, I think at one time somebody needed a couple of people to come to do the Santa pictures, you know. So like it's Christmas time, they bring Santa to, you know, to the school, kids take pictures with Santa, but we need volunteers to come and line up the kids and like bring them back to the classroom, you know, stuff like that. So that's one of the volunteer projects that we did. And then you did another one, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I want to just jump in there because there's, you know, we we all, Marisel's a professional educator, we all care very much about the academic success of our of our students. And you may be like, Santa pictures, this isn't moved. Like, I want to make a difference in education. Like, that's not moving the needle. But by the the local needs, right? The people in that school community said this is going to be something that we think that our families um would really appreciate. And they do different things like that, whether it's pictures with Santa or a field day or you know, just different events that are that happen oftentimes, sometimes during the school day, but most of the time out not outside of the school day, because the school day is for instructional periods, it brings families on campus. And when families are on campus with teachers and with the admins, it create one, it creates familiarity, it makes them feel more welcome to come to those parent-teacher conferences when those more formal conversations are needed. It gives a space for relationships to get built between other parents, between the staff and faculty and and the and the students and the parents. Um, and so I know it can seem frivolous for for having needs like I don't know that, but it really does build community.
SPEAKER_02It builds community. Yeah, and let me let me put my educator hat on and my restorative practitioner hat on. Um there is a lot of research. Like I know you mentioned it. There really is. Um I did a program through the Dolores Huerta PTA back back in the day. We called it Parent University. Um, Marta Plata, who who was part of um of the Fort Worth ISD, started it at Manuel Jara Elementary. I worked with her directly, she uh mentored me on how to do that program. So I ran the Parent University for several years at Dolores Huerta. And that program is based on raising highly capable kids, which is research based on the Search Institute's 40 developmental assets. And basically, again, long-term study showing that all of these assets, the more that kids have, the more successful they will be later in life. And I mean, we're talking beyond academics, academics included, but everything is like how can how can we highly capable, like make kids, yeah, like highly capable, successful later on in life. And a lot of the things that kept coming back though, you know, we would study those 40 assets. It was like parents being involved, parents being in school. And so, yeah, coming back to this idea of like, oh, it's a carnival, oh, it's a concession, you know, for during during a sports event, oh, it's a subject.
SPEAKER_04We needed people to work a book fair. A senior day needs senior day. These are other going back to the need volunteer needs that had been requested, those are examples.
SPEAKER_02These are all examples. But what's happening kind of in in addition to that, those those events, is like you said, the relationship building with the teachers. Teachers are part of this, they're they're a huge part of the PTA. It's not just like, oh, they're on the side. Uh, not only are they members, but they're the T in They're the T in the PTA, right?
SPEAKER_04And they can serve in every formal board role um except treasurer. You can't have a staff member being charge of the pocketbooks, but that's that's really it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And a lot of the times they are board members, but even if they aren't, just the fact that they're present. Think about it this way. Um, I show up to Loteria Night, I show up to the carnival, right? Um, with my kid because it's from five to seven, I'm off work, I can come, right? Oh, hey, I ran into some other parents that I know that they're selling nachos. Great, I'm gonna buy some nachos. Guess what? I also ran into my kid's teacher. Oh, now we're just gonna have a conversation. This is not a parent-teacher conference, this is not like your kid's in trouble. This is just we're having nachos and we're gonna play some loteria, right? Right. I start building that relationship with them. I start getting to know them. And this is one thing that I really leveraged a lot when I was both part of the PTA and also teaching. All of those parents knew me in that way. I think they knew me first as maestra, like part of like the PTA, rather than like, oh, well, we want my kid to be with you. Why? Because they know me already. We've had a relationship over the years. So, whenever something did come up with that student, like, oof, you know, I'm I'm I'm noticing some struggles here. That conversation was so much easier and more fruitful, right? Because now I'm engaging that parent in a totally different register.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. I really appreciate what y'all are doing, and and also for talking about it with us today. I there's a quote that I've been thinking a lot about lately from St. Augustine, and it it is that hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they don't remain as they are. And I just think that anger is a strong word, but you could even think about dissatisfaction. Like you guys saw a situation, which is a disparity among schools and parent groups in our in our district and city, and you were dissatisfied with that, and then you had the courage to do something about it to make sure that it doesn't remain that way. And uh I think that's what y'all are doing with this impact program. I really appreciate it. Um, I'm glad that we can be supportive of it and glad to have you all on here to talk about it today. So thank you.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah.
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