Year after year, families who have participated in this process have expressed their appreciation for the opportunity to talk informally with other parents and teacher about raising intellectually alive and emotionally mature children. By sharing their experience and insights, parents can compare notes and more effectively decide what they feel is best for their family. These issues, some centering strictly around the home, others involving general questions about the school experience, tend to come up every year. Parents seem to find it most helpful to talk them through in a relaxed, informal setting with others who have children of the same basic age group. Unfortunately, the formal setting of Parent Association meetings are rarely conducive to this kind of communication.
Committee reports and announcements always seem to get in the way of real dialogue.
One format that can provide an effective on-going structure is the Parent Forums, meeting on a regular basis, open to all interested families with children at a given age level. As you begin to think ahead for next fall, your school may want to consider organizing a series of Parent Forums sessions to serve as a new focus for organized parent meetings for the coming academic year. Parent Forums typically meet three or four times a year, and are held as optional programs in addition to other evening events that are presently sponsored by the school, such as orientation evenings, people nights, and parent education workshops. They offer an excellent opportunity for parents to address issues of common interest by talking about them in an open friendly atmosphere. Topics for discussion in Parent Forums are identified as the parents of each class define them, not as they are defined by the school.