No “Lazy Days of Summer” for our Youth

School is out for summer! As an Alaskan, our 24-hour daylight encourages lots of opportunity for kids to stay outdoors and active all summer long. One of our favorite jokes involves parents sending their kids outside to play, and telling them to be home by dark. However, you might be surprised to learn that kids all across the United States, including Alaska, tend to be less active during summer vacation than they are throughout the school year.  This can lead to a decrease in fitness and an increase in weight gain over the long break from school and structured activities.

From August to June, we physical educators do our best to provide students with the fitness, skills, motivation, and opportunity to be active before, during and after school. Once summer arrives, too many of our students plop down on the couch for hours at a time in front of televisions, tablets, and videogames.  The President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition reports that, on average, our kids spend more than 7 and ½ hours each day in front of a screen. So, how can we keep our students healthy,  physically active and meaningfully engaged during the long summer break?

Parents, this is where you come in. Your children will follow your example, so make it count. After a long day at work, grab your kids and take the dog for a nice, long walk. Do you have a few days off? Plan an active family vacation, or stay-cation! This doesn’t have to be expensive. Look around your community for free or inexpensive ways to be active: Is there a local swimming hole? Plan an afternoon of swimming with a nutritious picnic adventure.  Is there a new bicycle path that you haven’t yet explored?  Grab the bikes and go. Do you have an old tent and sleeping bags gathering dust? It might be time to dust them off and enjoy a long overdue camping trip.

Look for excuses to recognize your kids for taking initiative this summer. Did they clean up their rooms without being asked? Maybe they have helped you clean up the dishes for an entire week without complaint! Why not celebrate by taking a family trip to the local skate park, roller rink, rock climbing gym, or other active location?

How can you get your older kids to play outside if you’re busy working each day? Why not put together a fun scavenger hunt for their day with a friend, which includes a bike ride or walk to a particular location, with a few peculiar items on the list to collect? Examine your community with an eye for active adventures. You might be surprised to rediscover tennis courts, playgrounds, basketball courts, and other active environments that you had forgotten in the busy-ness of day-to-day living.

The truth is, when we were growing up, we often complained when we were “stuck in the house” during summer days. Being inside was “boring” and adventures were found on the other side of the front door. These days, our kids have too many indoor entertainment options that are designed to keep them in their seats and gazing at screens. We all want our kids to be healthy, fit and ready to learn when they return to school. A bit of creativity and planning can help us achieve this goal.

Nancy Blake is a teacher at Goose Bay Elementary School, AK.

Are You Engaged?

As PTA members, you know that family engagement is an important part of your child’s successful development and academic outcomes.  You participate on school advisory committees, lead parent advocacy, work with teachers in their classrooms, read all about ESSA and other regulations related to children’s health and education, and inspire your community to support all children.  Family engagement is evolving from “involvement” in the sense of families receiving a one-way stream of information and sponsoring endless fundraisers at school.  Instead, it’s the opportunity to build relationships between two crucial components of a child’s life together–families and school personnel–to further support their successful education, well-being and development.

As a parent, you have plenty of options, depending on availability, interests, skills, and personal constraints, to be engaged.  Many of you are finding ways such as these to do become a part of your child’s school community.

  • Establishing positive relationships with school administrators and teachers.
  • Meeting with teachers about academic and social development goals for your child. If you aren’t exactly sure what to ask your child’s teacher, check the Department of Education’s Parent Checklist to get started.
  • Attending PTA or school meetings to find out about the issues in your school.  Ask questions if other’s aren’t bringing up the things that matter to your child’s success or your community.
  • Volunteering on a committee that focuses on an activity or issue important to you, whether it’s school transportation, safe places to play after-school, teacher diversity, bullying or academics.
  • Voicing your opinion to local and state Boards of Education and local, state, and national elected officials on things that matter to your family.
  • Keeping up with and providing input on your state’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan. Check your state’s education website to find out about your parent representative and the developing plans.

Being engaged in education doesn’t require endless free time or multiple degrees and in-depth knowledge about schools. You just need a concern for your child and a little bit of time to act on that concern.

We know you are engaged in your schools, supporting your community and the Department of Education wants to hear from you.  If you’ve been recognized for your involvement in education by your state, share your story.  What did you do to garner such recognition? What lessons have you learned through your involvement?  What tips do you have for other parents who want to be engaged in their schools?

The Department of Education’s Family Ambassador, Frances Frost, wants to feature you in an upcoming Family, School and Community Engagement Newsletter, distributed monthly by the Department.  Submit your story for consideration, in 400 words or less, with your contact information to carrie.jasper@ed.gov, with the subject line “Parent Involvement for Newsletter.”

Frances Frost is the Family Ambassador at the U.S. Department of Education, serving as an advocate for family engagement in education and equitable opportunities for learning for all children. She brings the family voice to discussions at a national level and facilitates discussions between the Department, families and family engagement stakeholders.

ASK (Asking Saves Kids)

Across the country, children are anxiously waiting for the final bell of the school year to ring in summer break. During this time of year, my two kids were always full of energy and ready for the warm weather and hours spent outside with friends, neighbors and extended family. They’re older now, but in those first few days of playdates, picnics and barbecues there was one thing that was always on my mind: is there a gun where my children are playing?

More than 18,000 American children and teens are injured or killed by guns every year, making firearms the second leading cause of death for young people. These numbers are tragic and shocking, but they also shouldn’t be a surprise when an astonishing 1 in 3 homes with children have guns, many of which are left unlocked or loaded. This is why I ask—and encourage all other parents to do the same—this life-saving question of fellow parents, friends and relatives: “is there a gun in the home where my child plays?”

And this is why the Brady Campaign developed the ASK (Asking Saves Kids) campaign: to prevent as many unintentional youth firearm deaths as possible by spreading the message that guns in the home increase the risk of an accidental shooting or suicide. We know that the safest home for a child is one without a gun, but this isn’t an attack on the Second Amendment rights of Americans or gun owners. We simply believe that parents who choose to keep a gun in the home should take steps to reduce the risk of a tragedy by making sure it is properly locked and stored separately from live ammunition.

And teachers and fellow parents, and even doctors and childcare professionals, can all play an important role in spreading the word about this critical public health and child safety issue.

More than 80 percent of unintentional firearm deaths of children under 15 occur in a home. No child should become a statistic, so we should all bring this topic up every time we have the chance. From one parent to another, I know you may worry that this conversation could get uncomfortable. But I also know that awkward topics just come with the territory of having children, and that this one question can lead to a host of productive discussions that may save a kid’s life. In the same way that you make sure peanut butter sandwiches won’t be served at a party in your home or classroom if your child has a nut allergy, or when you inquire about rules at a sleepover, asking about guns should be a regular question.

We’ve put together some tools that make it easier to start these conversations, and share this message with your friends, family, communities, and networks. Download our ASK Toolkit, which is chock full of tips, resources, and statistics and has everything you need to get started as a leader on this issue in your community. Read the PTA letter that you can share with other parents to get them involved in this movement.

As parents and teachers, all we want is for our children to grow up into healthy, happy adults. I know I would do anything to make that dream a reality, and I’m sure you would, too. By neglecting the topic of guns, we ignore a critical opportunity to ensure our children have the chance to grow up into those adults that we want them to become.

Dan Gross is President of the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence

Summer Means Sun, Fun, and … The Smart Talk?

[Sponsored Post] As kids eagerly anticipate the start of summer break with relaxed schedules and no homework, parents face the decision whether or not to relax rules around screen time and digital devices. To deal with this transition from school to summer, one PTA dad has decided it’s time for his family to have ‘The Smart Talk’ … again.

When Alvin Gainey’s oldest daughter—who is now 16—started first grade, she got a cell phone.

“She was in aftercare and this was a way to communicate in the event of an emergency or if we were running late,” recalls Gainey. “Of course, back then people weren’t using their phones for everything like we do now. We basically just handed her the phone; we didn’t talk with her about digital safety or our family ground rules or screen time. I wasn’t worried one bit about her ‘digital life’ back then.”

Gainey admits he worries now. “Times have changed. Kids put everything online. And I mean, everything.”

As the Miami-Dade PTA Council President and highly involved dad of three school-age kids (his younger children are 9 and 11), Gainey jumped at the chance earlier this year to receive one of 20 grants awarded from National PTA and LifeLock to host a community event on digital parenting as an extension of Safer Internet Day.

The Miami event featured a digital safety expert who helped families better understand the many upsides of modern technology as well as the potential risks. A major focus of the event was on ‘The Smart Talk’ which is a free online tool created by National PTA and LifeLock that guides parents and kids together in an exercise that allows them to set customized technology ground rules for their household.

When Gainey completed The Smart Talk with his kids, he came to the startling realization that a lot of what he was doing in his own digital life maybe wasn’t so smart. “I am a big believer in practicing what I preach,” said Gainey. “All of a sudden we’re going through the prompts online in The Smart Talk, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh no, I have to change some of this for myself if I expect my daughter to change what she’s doing too.’ It was very, very eye-opening.”

He also acknowledged that The Smart Talk helped him and his wife tackle an “awkward” conversation with one of their children about some recent questionable online behavior. Gainey noted, “Even though The Smart Talk was primarily intended for parents giving younger kids a device for the first time, I definitely found it helpful with my kids who have had devices for a while. Like a reset button.”

With summer approaching, Gainey admits his household will relax some of the rules they previously established using The Smart Talk. “We have to do the whole exercise over again because some of our technology rules for the summer break are going to be different than what we have now for the school year. I guess we’ll have a summer Smart Talk!” he noted with a laugh.

In summer, Gainey’s kids “self-manage” their own time a lot more especially during the day and that often equates to more screen time with less oversight. Gainey plans to praise his kids for making good decisions like turning off their phone at the dinner table and encouraging a balance between device time and having fun in other ways. Since the kids will have more digital access during the day, he said they are likely to institute device-free hours in the evening which will be a major change from their original Smart Talk contract which allowed for devices in the evening.

When asked what advice Gainey has for other parents grappling with the transition from school to summer, he replied enthusiastically, “Honestly, have The Smart Talk as a family. Seriously. If you’ve had it before, have it again. The rules you set in September probably don’t make sense in June, and everything changes so rapidly with your kids and technology anyway that you can’t ever just set it and forget it.”

To have The Smart Talk with your household, visit TheSmartTalk.org.

Pro Tip: Before gathering your kids to complete this exercise with you, consider reviewing the website and talking privately with your co-parent to make sure you are on the same page. This “pre-talk” helps ensure a smoother Smart Talk experience with your kids. 

LifeLock, a modern identity theft protection company, is a longstanding Proud National PTA Sponsor and co-creator with National PTA of The Smart Talk.

National PTA does not endorse any commercial entity, product, or service. No endorsement of LifeLock is implied.