What's Happening

Soaring and Roaring to Excellence:

PTA Mentor Project Has Rewards for All

 Melissa Erickson

President FishHawk Creek Elementary PTA

Two years ago as our PTA Board was sitting down to write our yearly awards we came across the form for the Mentor-A-PTA award.  Unsure what it was we made a few phone calls and found out it was to recognize a PTA that had found some degree of success to lend ideas and support to a PTA that needed it.  Although we had not qualified for the award that year many of us were intrigued and decided that we would like participate in such a program.

That decision was easy, actually starting the program was a bit more challenging.  Inquires we made to the county and state level were met with plenty of encouragement but there did not seem to be an already established plan to put in place:  How do you pick a school?  We did not want to insult someone by telling them we thought they needed a mentor.  What does the Mentor PTA do?  We did not want to become the PTA for another school.  For a whole year we stagnated, we had a line item in the budget for “Mentor Program” but we had no one to Mentor.

Then in the beginning of the 2006 – 2007 school year we found our school!  Dr. Paul H Sheehy Elementary was a natural choice.  We were chartered the same year and we originally shared some staff. When we approached the Principal and PTA President they were both welcoming and willing to partner so we decided to go ahead, still not sure what we were doing.

It was very easy to notice the differences between our schools.  It was not the differences on which we wanted to base our partnership.  We decided to start with a letter writing campaign between students so they could get to know each other.  Since we were starting this project in January, FCAT was on many minds, we decided that this gave students a common ground on which to base their first letters.  Members of the FishHawk Creek PTA traveled to Sheehy to serve lunch to the staff and sno-cones to all students and deliver the first set of pen-pal letters.   We called our project Soaring and Roaring to Excellence based on our FishHawk Falcon and Sheehy Royal mascot.  The response was immediate and overwhelming.  The students were so enthusiastic about the letter writing that letters flew back and forth between the schools with some classes writing every week.  This response made us accelerate our plan for having students meet (we did not think we could make this happen until year 2 of the project) and on May 9^th 60 students from Sheehy that had been the most active pen-pals came out to FishHawk Creek for a beach party.  They got to meet their pal face to face, were treated to stories by a professional story teller and had a beach party themed pizza lunch at the school.  We also took pictures of the so each student would have a picture of their pen-pal. It was amazing to see how quickly the students blended.  An outsider that day would not have been able to tell which students attended the individual schools.

We also kicked off other aspects of our project this year.  We conducted a book drive during our book fair and collected over 1500 book enough so every student at Sheehy could select one during a PTA Bookfair.  During summer uniform sales we are collecting gently worn uniforms to pass along to the Sheehy PTA to distribute to families that need them.  In the upcoming year we hope to attend trainings together, share ideas for membership drives and programs and cooperate in many ways.

The most essential element of this project is that it is a true PARTNERSHIP.  Teachers on both ends have provided enthusiastic support which has been essential.  The beach party meeting would not have been possible without the support of business partners to both schools.  Most importantly Mrs. Pam Bush of FishHawk Creek and Ms. Carolyn Hill of Sheehy have been behind us is such a way that we exceeded expectations in year one.  Everyone involved with this project has been so energized by our start we can not wait to see what we can accomplish in the 2007 – 2008 school year!