I received a question from one of the parents in our PTA whether I’ll be interested to serve as a parent representative to my daughter’s school council.
TBH, all I know about the council is that I post agenda and minutes from their regular meetings to our PTA website.
I don’t know what it does and who make up this group in a school, so in an effort not to appear ignorant about it, I replied, ‘hmm, what’s the position about - not sure if I am qualified.’
She replied that all a school council parent representative really needs is interest in academics and be able to attend 5 Thursday meetings in a school year.
I replied ‘Sure, if no one is available, I can certainly do that.’ I really am interested in learning, so sure I am interested in Academics! In addition to my technical pursuits, I’ve recently completed crash courses on Philosophy, Psychology and World History. Yes, I’ve taken them from my formal education almost 20 years ago, but I’ve long forgotten the concepts. Plus, I felt that the instruction I received back then were not effective. Now, I’m taking US Civics - and I’m enjoying the format from Crash Course - I’ll post more about how awesome this is in a later post.
Anyway, a day or two after that, I received another email from her asking me to write a short paragraph why I’d make a great rep to the school council.
Yikes! So I typed away the following:
I am an active member of the BES community and will have two children enrolled next year (Grade 5 and Kindergartner) Having attended public schools as a kid, I am a firm believer that the best education should be accessible not just for few but for all. As a #CSForAll advocate, it is my hope that all BES students be taught Computer Science so our kids won’t just consume technology but will be equipped to create and innovate throughout our economy and society in the future.
I have personally witnessed and experienced the great partnership among teachers, parents and school administration when I started and continue to run the coding club for BES. Having worked with kids teaching computer science, I have witnessed successes and challenges of working with kids of varying skills and level. So I have worked with 4th-grade teachers so that they could introduce code.org to all 4th graders. Next year, I’d like to work with all teachers so CS will be taught to all BES kids! I have helped organize our school’s participation in technology fair and it is my desire to get more kids to participate next year because entering the technology fair requires planning, designing, implementing and improving one’s creations and projects, a very important skill for every kid to learn, in addition to their core subjects. This is where I could apply my industry experience as a full-time software developer for a paper company, where I apply engineering every day! It is my plan to identify potential projects and opportunities with our community partner Briarlake Forest Park so our kids can apply computer science concepts and technology with environmental science, engineering, and math! This will require help and support from PTO, teachers and school administration, and I am thankful for the opportunity to advance our STEM initiatives as a parent rep to the school council.
That is NOT short by any measure. After writing all that, I realized how I love serving our school. No matter what though, regardless whether I get to serve or not, the writing helped me formulate what I want to accomplish next school year.