Announcing the Ohio School Breakfast Challenge Statewide 2018 “Champions of Breakfast Awards”

Announcing the Ohio School Breakfast Challenge Statewide

2018 “Champions of Breakfast Awards”

It’s time to share your school breakfast best practice! Nominate your school for the “Champions of Breakfast Award.”  This award recognizes individual schools or districts that demonstrate collaborative efforts used to create, enhance or expand their School Breakfast Program.  

Nomination forms and a description of the award are available here.

Nominations will be accepted through January 31, 2018.  Email completed nomination forms to breakfast@drink-milk.com.  

Awards will be announced during National School Breakfast Week, March 5-8, 2018.

New Poll Reveals How Young Children Are Using Social Media and Messaging Apps

New Poll Reveals How Young Children Are Using Social Media

and Messaging Apps

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Dec. 5, 2017)—National PTA released today the results of a national poll exploring the use of social media and messaging apps among young children. The poll, which surveyed 1,200 parents of children under the age of 13, was conducted in collaboration with Facebook earlier this year through Lincoln Park Strategies. The findings show that the majority of parents allow their children to use messaging apps and social media to stay in touch with friends and family.

“Helping children navigate the digital world has become a crucial element of parenting,” said Jim Accomando, president of National PTA. “Through the poll, we explored the prevalence of young children using social media and messaging apps and gauged how they are using these tools. The results make our efforts to empower parents to help their children be safe and responsible online that much more important.”

Key findings revealed that:

• 61% of parents said their children under age 13 use messaging apps and/or social media.
• 81% of parents said their children started using social media between the ages of eight and 13.
• 64% of parents whose children under 13 use social media say that it provides convenient ways to keep in touch and keep track of their children when they are not with them; 61% of parents whose children under 13 use messaging apps feel similarly.
• 57% of children who use social media are using their own device, and 58% of children who use messaging apps are using their own device.

Through the poll, parents also reported wanting to help their young children use social media and messaging apps responsibly—nearly nine in 10 say that they monitor their children’s online activities. More than half of parents said they would not allow their children to use social media and messaging apps without monitoring tools. However, parents reported they’d like to have a greater say in their young child’s use of social media and messaging apps: nearly three-quarters of parents whose children use messaging apps indicated that they want more control.

Despite online safety concerns such as bullying, parents believe messaging apps and social media can help keep their children safe and can provide good tools for learning. Poll results also show that connecting with family is the primary reason parents allow their young children to use messaging and social media apps.

• 68% of parents agreed that messaging apps help them connect as a family.
• 69% of parents said their children use social media to communicate with relatives such as grandparents and cousins.

“As parents, we want our children to connect, learn and have fun through technology, and at the same time, stay safe,” added Nathan R. Monell, CAE, National PTA executive director. “Learning about how families are using social media and messaging apps is a critical component to helping them take advantage of the opportunities that the tools offer while building good digital habits and ensuring children have the skills they need to be responsible in the digital world.”

As part of National PTA’s ongoing digital safety efforts, the association encourages families to have open, ongoing conversations about devices and technology use and establish ground rules together using The Smart Talk. National PTA remains committed to helping parents empower their children to become smart digital citizens in an increasingly connected world.

To read the survey results from Lincoln Park Strategies, visit PTA.org.

About National PTA

National PTA® comprises millions of families, students, teachers, administrators, and business and community leaders devoted to the educational success of children and the promotion of family engagement in schools. PTA is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit association that prides itself on being a powerful voice for all children, a relevant resource for families and communities, and a strong advocate for public education. Membership in PTA is open to anyone who wants to be involved and make a difference for the education, health, and welfare of children and youth. For more information, visit PTA.org.

Media Contact

Heidi May Wilson, National PTA

hmay@pta.org, (703) 518-1242

PTA.ORG | PTA MARKETPLACE | PTA BACK-TO-SCHOOL KIT | UPCOMING PTA EVENTS

Computer Science Education Week is coming up! Starting Dec. 4, students all around the world will take an hour out of the week to spend time on coding. ThinkFun, a proud supporting sponsor of National PTA's STEM + Families initiative, wants to help you teach your children 21st-century thinking skills. ThinkFun’s experts have created an Hour of Code activity that teaches Boolean Logic principles through fun puzzle solving. This activity has been officially approved by Code.org and is listed on the Hour of Code site! Play 'Robot Repair' Now You can find ThinkFun's entire line of new, unplugged coding board games at Target!

The Invisible Population: Supporting Foster Families

Foster families are an “invisible population.” If one hundred children were on a school playground, you couldn’t—or shouldn’t—be able to tell which ones were foster youth. If you were at a mall, you couldn’t pick out the foster families that pass you by.

According to the National Working Group on Foster Care and Education, education has the potential to be a positive counterweight to abuse, neglect, separation, impermanence, and instability for the 400,000+ children and youth served in foster care each year in the United States.

PTA’s mission is to advocate for every child. But how does a local PTA welcome and support an invisible population?

PTA’s duty is to be welcoming in general and more specifically promote efforts to raise student achievement.

However, because of privacy considerations, essentially the only way to know if a specific child or caregiver is in the foster care system is to create a welcoming environment that encourages them to self-identify.

Local PTAs have the potential to help foster families at the grassroots level while increasing their PTA’s value and relevance within their community.

The engagement level specific to supporting foster families can be as little or as much as an individual PTA chooses; don’t be afraid to do just a few things in this arena, for fear that it’s not “enough.” It all helps.

For example, local PTAs could:

• Proactively, deliberately welcome foster parents into the PTA. Once the foster parents self-identify they no longer are a part of the “invisible population.” Welcoming foster families into local PTAs can be a part of an overall effort to become more diverse and engage underserved families.

• Establish a child welfare committee with one of its goals being the support specifically of foster families. The committee could be called the diversity committee with a sub-goal to help foster parents.

• Establish partnerships with the local foster care agency and ask how the PTA could share its parent involvement expertise to support the agency’s foster parents.

• Source and fund the delivery of a teacher training to be presented during a professional development day. Teachers need to understand the challenges that foster youth face and potential impact on classroom management and test scores. This same training could be adjusted to be presented to foster parents.

• Engage local legislators or foster care agencies to suggest that parent involvement training be included as one of the trainings offered to foster parents. All foster parents are required to attend annual training, so why not focus on parent involvement as one of the trainings?

• Ask a known foster parent to write articles about relevant foster care concerns and resources for the local PTA newsletter.

• Individuals with a passion for creating a foster parent PTA in their state can check with their state PTA to determine chartering requirements. Check out Maryland’s Foster Parent PTA as a potential example.

In addition to increasing the number of paid local PTA memberships and increasing PTA awareness and relevance within the community, increasing the support for teachers will be an important outcome for engaging and welcoming foster families.

If foster families become more involved and connected to the local school and the PTA, the critical home/school connection will be strengthened. Foster youth sometimes exhibit challenging behaviors; however, when foster parents work effectively with the teachers, the disruptive behaviors become more manageable.

Foster families may be an “invisible population,” but the gains that can come from local PTAs choosing to support this population can have very visible and positive results.

Sam Macer is the founder of the first foster parent PTA.