Men Make a Difference Day

This has nothing to do with World Languages, but I want to share it with you because it is fantastic!! Today, our school celebrated Men Make A Difference Day. This is a day created by Dr. Michael A. Robinson, CEO of Forest of the Rain Productions. According to Dr. Robinson, the goal of the day is to create parental engagement among men. There is some good information about this event on this page on EventBrite. Our school is always looking for new ways to engage our students' families, so we are so thankful for this excellent idea! Our students were encouraged to invite their fathers (or another important male figure--grandfather, uncle, neighbor, etc.) to school with them for the morning. Any man that wanted to participate had to sign a contract that said that he would be at school for the morning of 10/10/11, would attend one parent/teacher conference, and several other things that I have forgotten (one might have been helping with homework or attending a sporting/music event with his child). I'm not sure what our final participation was, but it was so many that we ran out of room in the breakfast room that we had prepared! The men were served breakfast (a delicious breakfast with bacon that smelled up the entire school, torturing my pregnant nose!) during first period, and then attended their child's second period class with their son or daughter. They also had a photo taken together during the breakfast which they were able to pick up before they left for the morning. I had 10 dads in my second period class of 32 students!! How awesome is that! It was so much fun to watch the kids watch their dads try to follow along and participate, and it was great exposure for World Languages--I made sure to plan today as a storytelling day :) What an excellent way for dads to have insight into the challenges that their children face at school, and for their children to see how much they mean to their dads that they would spend a morning with them and commit to spending more time investing in their education in the future. I would encourage you to organize some celebration of Men Make a Difference Day for your school next year! It works well for our school because we have class on Columbus Day, but if you are among the lucky ones to have a day off, perhaps you can celebrate it at another time.