The Multipurpose Room

School boards are responsible for setting the direction of a school or district. As a PTA or PTO leader whose mission is to advocate for our children, being involved with the school board is an important element of that advocacy. But how, where, when? This episode will give some background on school boards and how to work with them.

This show is brought to you by K-12 Clothing. K-12 Clothing is a PTA-Dad created business focused on providing high-quality school apparel while increasing access to educational resources through fundraising in schools. Learn more at https://linktr.ee/k12clothing

After each summer, teachers measure and address the summer slide - learning loss over the summer. But what about the “pandemic slide” where each student’s unique 18 month learning experience has left gaps in what they know and don’t know. How should teachers understand, measure and address this much larger, and more differentiated issue? Our guest today offers tips for teachers, administrators, parent teacher groups, and parents to help support our students over the summer and return to learning in the fall.

About Our Guest: Chris Hull, Co-Founder and CPO, Otus

Chris is the Co-Founder and CPO at Otus. Otus is the first edtech platform to centralize learning management, assessment, and data for educators, students, and families. Chris was named a “20 To Watch” Educational Technology Leader by the National School Boards Association. Otus serves 160 unique school districts with over 1,000,000 monthly users, and has grown revenue by 300% annually.

This show is brought to you by K-12 Clothing. K-12 Clothing is a PTA-Dad created business focused on providing high-quality school apparel while increasing access to educational resources through fundraising in schools. Learn more at https://linktr.ee/k12clothing

As the school year comes to an end, you may be struggling to find your passion for teaching. Or maybe the pandemic has shown you a better way to teach your curriculum. This episode is all about how to overhaul your curriculum and get buy in to do so. Our guest has some radical ideas on how he threw away his textbook and became an unconventional middle school teacher. 

About Our Guest: Jon Hinthorne, An Unconventional Teacher

Jon Hinthorne is fully committed to helping make our education system great, supporting young people to find a sense of purpose in life, and being unconventional while doing it. 

After falling in love with education in his first two years of teaching Spanish 3, 4, and 5 at Principia Upper School, he moved to Boston to join City Year Boston as a Corps Member working on a team of incredible young people in National Service. He was a tutor, after school leader, and mentor for 7th and 8th grade students in Mission Hill, Boston, MA. The next year he served another year as a National Teaching Fellow with Citizen Schools Massachusetts.  

He then moved to San Jose, California with his wife to complete his CA Teaching Credential and worked at City Year San Jose for three years as a Program Manager. He also completed his Masters in Education from Webster University during that time. 

He fell in love with (PBL) Project Based Learning and decided to move to the central coast of California to start a family and work at another PBL school called Central Coast New Tech High School in Nipomo, CA.  

Jon has found his home on the California central coast and at CCNTH. He also composes and produces solo piano music which can be found on iTunes and Spotify. He currently lives in Arroyo Grande, CA with his two young boys, Mason and Jacob and incredible wife, Jenny.

This show is brought to you by K-12 Clothing. K-12 Clothing is a PTA-Dad created business focused on providing high-quality school apparel while increasing access to educational resources through fundraising in schools. Learn more at https://linktr.ee/k12clothing

Whether in person or online, all school auction chairs agree that keeping the audience engaged and entertained leads to a more successful auction. One of the easiest ways to do that is to hire a professional auctioneer. If you consider that a professional only takes about 2 minutes to auction an item and a non-professional takes 5, for a 15 item auction, that is the difference between 30 minutes and 75 minutes for your live auction. This means that with a professional you can either auction more items in the allotted time or have a shorter auction with a more engaged audience. But where do you start if you are considering hiring an auctioneer and what are important qualities to look for? Or what if you really want to be the auctioneer yourself, what can you learn from a professional? This episode features a professional auctioneer, a Colorado champion auctioneer, sharing her tips for school auction chairs, PTA or PTO leaders, and other school auction committee members. 

About Our Guest: Halie Behr, Fundaneer

Halie Behr is an accomplished, auction professional with a passion for the nonprofit and fundraising industry. She is a 2010 World Wide College of Auctioneering graduate and now a World Wide instructor, teaching students the craft of bid calling. Halie competed and won her first ever auctioneering competition in 2013- the International Junior Auctioneering Championship cementing her love for competition and the auction industry. Since then she went on to obtain her BAS (Benefit Auction Specialist) designation from the National Auctioneers Association and graduated from Iowa State University with a Bachelor of Science in Event and Hospitality Management. Behr is the current reigning Colorado State Champion and is on the Board of Directors for the Colorado State Association. Celebrating over ten years in the auction industry, Halie sells automobiles at Dealers Auto Auction of the Rockies and owns and operates Halie Behr, Fundaneer LLC, performing fundraising auctions all over the U.S. to support the needs of nonprofits and schools. 

This show is brought to you by K-12 Clothing. K-12 Clothing is a PTA-Dad created business focused on providing high-quality school apparel while increasing access to educational resources through fundraising in schools. Learn more at https://linktr.ee/k12clothing

Much like the rest of the educational system, the school auction has changed dramatically over the past year. If you’re an auction chair or parent teacher group leader wondering where to start with your online or hybrid auction or how to be successful on the day of, this is the episode for you. We will talk to two auction experts about online auction technology, how to shop for auction technology and how to be successful on the day of your auction.

About Our Guests: Simon Wells, Xcira and Roger Devine, SchoolAuction.net

Calling all school auction chairs, leaders, and volunteers. Auction season is in full swing so we are bringing you a multi-year auction chair who will share her top tips for a successful auction. Hear how you should structure your committee, top selling items, and what you should and shouldn’t do on the day of your auction.

About Our Guest: Christina Linezo, Auction Chair and Realtor

Christina is a mom of three currently living in Orinda, California. She is heavily involved in her children’s schools and has volunteered and participated in multiple ways - serving in various board positions, as Room Parent, volunteering in the classroom and on field trips, and organizing and leading a variety of class and all-school events, social opportunities, and fundraisers - including the school auction! She is a former educator herself, with a BA in Arts Education. Christina worked at a Children’s Museum in San Francisco with K-12 students and also designed and implemented their Early Childhood program. She has since transitioned to a successful career as a Realtor in the beautiful San Francisco East Bay. 

This show is brought to you by K-12 Clothing. K-12 Clothing is a PTA-Dad created business focused on providing high-quality school apparel while increasing access to educational resources through fundraising in schools. Learn more at https://linktr.ee/k12clothing

Are you a teacher staring at your recently filed taxes wondering if you have the right strategy? Do you want to know more about the nuances of your 403b plan? You are in good company and this episode will give you four quick tips, specific to teachers from a teacher who is an expert in personal finance.

Here are some resources to check out after the episode:

• https://www.403bwise.org/
• https://www.choosefi.com/

About Our Guest: Rob Phelan, Maryland Math Teacher and Founder of the Simple Start Up

Is the Principal asking for your PTA to clear out your old spirit wear closet? Rather than adding those goods to the 11.3 million tons in EPA estimated textile waste thrown into dumps each year, you can use those items to boost your fundraising efforts. In a year where the pandemic has led to budget shortfalls, getting creative with fundraising becomes even more important and this episode will share some tips on how to turn old apparel items into fundraising dollars for your school.

About Our Guest: Nathan Rothstein, President, Project Repat

Nathan Rothstein along with Ross Lohr, started Project Repat in 2012, as an easy way for people to preserve their t-shirt memories and upcycle them into t-shirt quilts. Repat now is one of the top Shopify sites in the US, and has been featured on CNN, the Today Show, NPR, and MSNBC. After graduating from UMass-Amherst, Nathan joined Americorps in New Orleans to work on Hurricane Katrina recovery projects. He now lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife, and two year old daughter. 

This show is brought to you by K-12 Clothing. K-12 Clothing is a PTA-Dad created business focused on providing high-quality school apparel while increasing access to educational resources through fundraising in schools. Learn more at https://linktr.ee/k12clothing

Did you know that White and Asian students are 1.8 times more likely to enroll in AP and IB courses versus their Black and Latino peers regardless of grades and desire? Schools, teachers, principals, superintendents and PTOs/PTAs can help to address this disparity. Today’s episode shines a light on some of the inequities that exist in K-12 schooling, how they manifest, and how school districts, teachers, and PTA/PTO can address these inequities. 

About Our Guest: Dolores Caamano, Managing Director, Partnership Development, Equal Opportunity Schools

Dolores Caamano knows what it feels like to have to work six, and most times, 10 times harder just to be seen, just to be heard. As a Latina student who grew up in poverty in a single-parent household, nothing came easy. Not the nice clothes. Not the home-cooked meals. And definitely not the perfect family. She did well in school – in fact, school was the only place where she didn’t have to be the poor girl from an unstable family. At school, she could be the smart, aggressive, go-getter. That had a better ring to it, so she went with that.

Dolores thrived off her positive adult interactions with her teachers. Why? Well, because she didn’t get them at home. And even though her teachers thought the world of her, she never quite fit the mold of the ideal student. Maybe it was the smell of smoke on her clothes or the fact that her mom never showed up for a PTA meeting, but Dolores realized that there was only so much she could do alone. Fortunately for Dolores, all that changed her freshman year. Mrs. Padalecki (P for short) was her journalism teacher. P pushed, encouraged, and supported Dolores in ways no adult had ever done before. She didn’t lower the standards for Dolores because she knew life was hard at home. No, she did the opposite. She made sure Dolores was involved and had access to every opportunity that she knew would get her to where she wanted to be. By senior year, Dolores was a Bill Gates Millennium Scholar, which gave Dolores a full-ride scholarship to any university of her choice.

Dolores always had a passion for journalism, but once she graduated from The University of Missouri, she knew she wanted to be to students what Mrs. Padalecki was to her – their Trusted Adult. After 8 years as a high school teacher, Dolores joined Equal Opportunity Schools as a Partnership Director to ensure schools all over the country had the tools and support they needed to truly SEE students who so often go unseen – outside of GPA and test score – a full, 360-view of who they are and who they want to be. EOS was the only thing that could take Dolores out of the classroom. Now, as the Managing Director for Partnership Development, Dolores uses her lens as a low-income student of color, teacher, and Partnership Director to guide her conversations with prospective districts across the country.

This show is brought to you by K-12 Clothing. K-12 Clothing is a PTA-Dad created business focused on providing high-quality school apparel while increasing access to educational resources through fundraising in schools. Learn more at k12clothing.com

PTA, PTO, “National”, State PTAs - what’s the deal? This episode will demystify the multitude of PTs as well as give tips for the best way to leverage the resources. If you are a PTA leader, PTO leader or parent wondering how to navigate the PT system or how to leverage the resources, this episode is for you. 

About Our Guest: MaryBeth Weeks, New Mexico PTA President

MaryBeth Weeks is currently the New Mexico PTA President. Her term of office began on July 1, 2019 and goes through June 30, 2021. She served as a local PTA President and as a member of the NMPTA Board of Directors before assuming the office of New Mexico PTA’s President. MaryBeth has participated as a member of the New Mexico Public Education Dept Family Cabinet, the Rio Rancho CPAT and as a member of her elementary school’s SAC. She is the mom of seven children ranging in age from nineteen to six. Four of her children receive special education services through her children’s school district. MaryBeth is an advocate for equitable education for all children and believes that every student can succeed when education is provided in an appropriate learning environment.

This show is brought to you by K-12 Clothing. K-12 Clothing is a PTA-Dad created business focused on providing high-quality school apparel while increasing access to educational resources through fundraising in schools. Learn more at k12clothing.com