How to partner with parents | A conversation with Christina Hidek

Forget bake sales, forget decorating the classroom. Today, parent groups can help solve your biggest school challenges, but only if you know how to engage them. That's what we're dealing with today. We are looking at parent-teacher associations, and I reckon this episode is going to really, really help.

Hey, everyone. I'm Shane Leaning. Welcome to Education Leaders, the chat-topping leadership podcast for school leaders just like you. As an organizational coach, I've helped thousands of leaders worldwide lead with greater confidence, make better decisions, and create winning teams.

And on this show, we explore the strategies that are going to help you achieve your goals and transform your leadership. This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association, so stay tuned to know more. Now, this episode's a little bit different from our usual format, but I'm really excited to have this conversation. My guest today is Christina Hiddek.

Christina is, well, Christina's a parent, but she's a parent turned professional organizer and a certified parent-teacher association volunteer nerd. She actually founded an organization called PTO ANSYS seven years ago in a mission to boost family engagement in schools and really help empower parents to improve their child's experience in the school. She's been an active parent-teacher leader for many, many years, and she also hosts one of the biggest PTO communities. I'll give you a link to that later.

If you're curious about the parent perspective on schools, Christina has you covered. And in this conversation, we've talked about how to transform that sometimes what can be adversarial relationship between schools and parents into a powerful partnership. I think this conversation is going to challenge how you engage with your parent community. So let's jump right in.

When parents feel passionately about their school community, it just adds another layer of richness that really can't be replicated by any of the educators or the school leaders. And it also shows the students that their parents know what's going on and that they care. And so I think just the world of possibilities is only limited by your imagination or your ability to come up with thinking about how the parents can enrich your community. Because there are so many parents that are involved in their capabilities, their talents, you don't even know what they are.

And so you're not even tapping into them. Educators are good at teaching kids and running schools. They're not necessarily good at running events, raising money, or coming up with out of the box things. Like not everybody thinks in those terms of being able to think like really big picture and then also honing it down to where you can make it happen, you know, those execution skills.

Because what the educators are coming like they're training, that's not what you're getting trained on at all. And so when you have parents involved, like I said, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. It's a bit of a light bulb moment for me actually, because in a way, the teachers and your staff who you've got in your school, you know, if you're a leader, you've potentially interviewed them, you know them well, you know their skill set probably, you know really well. And yet you've got this huge body of people who care deeply about your school who you probably know very little about.

And yet the skill set is probably, there's probably so much to kind of leverage there, right? Absolutely, like at my elementary school, we had a married couple, like parents who were involved at this school, they were children's authors. Well, like what could you do with that? Like, and how would you have known that?

It's like, it's almost like you need a little get to know you parent interview sheet. That is not a bad idea, I should develop one of those. You should. To myself, because that would be really powerful.

I just don't think anybody would think to ask the parents that, of like how they wanna get involved or what they would be good at or what the connections they have because you don't know unless you ask. Yes, and I guess it's like, we're hinting, it's not just bake sales, right? No, that is so like 1960s thinking and we're not teaching the same way, you know, that you taught in the 1960s. Nothing runs like it did in the 1960s.

Yeah, well, yes, yes. Well, let's explore that a bit. I'd love to get a bit of your experience. So you work with many PTOs, PTAs, whatever we call them, different places, but you work with many parent communities across the world in the work that you do.

So you must have some good stories of how parents have worked with schools to solve some of their challenges or to kind of work on stuff together. I'd love to explore some of those ideas. Sure, so one that I didn't really realize the true value of this conversation at the time. So this happened with me personally involved in my children's school.

We have parent-teacher conferences once or twice a year. And so after the first round, I think this was like maybe in October and we were at the PTO meeting the next month. And so we brought up the issue that what was happening was during COVID, the school had moved to an online scheduling system for conferences to where you could go on and pick which teachers you wanted to have parent-teacher conferences with. There was something messed up in the settings to where the teachers could not see on their end if parents were signing up for a virtual or an in-person meeting.

As a result, they were not calling the parents who had signed up for a virtual conference. So the parents are sitting there waiting for a call from the schools, thinking the teachers are slackers because they didn't call them. The teachers are thinking the parents are slackers because they've missed their scheduled conference time when in reality, it was a technical glitch that was totally avoidable. So we were telling the principal this and his face was just like, that's horrible.

And there was actually a teacher representative there that night. And so what we ended up doing was informed him about the problem. And then the three different stakeholder groups kind of worked out a solution, which was really simple because they typically had two nights of conferences at our school. One night was designated as virtual.

So if you're signing up for this night, we would expect a call or a video link to be sent from the teacher. And the next night would be for in-person conferences. That's all it took to solve a massive, massive problem. Cause you know, like the parents who are most likely to show up to a parent teacher conference are the more engaged parents.

So if you have those parents being turned off by the teachers not doing what they think they should be doing, like that's a huge problem. So we were able to solve that really quickly, but without that, there was no special meeting call. It was at a regular PTO meeting. It was just kind of brought up like, Hey, did you know that this was happening sort of thing?

So it was really nice to solve that. Am I hearing right that you had this challenge that had come up? It was a challenge that was perceived by the parents. So parents kind of brought it up.

And then the school didn't go, thank you for the information. Let me take you off their hands. I'll come and solve a solution. The parents were still involved in the creation of the solution in the school.

That's really powerful. Right, because it had to work for everybody. It had to work for the administration or the school leaders. It had to work for the teachers and it had to work for the parents.

We were all there so we could just work together to solve it. So it was really amazing. And like I said, at the time I was like, well, that was really productive, but I didn't really think about the full scope of the impact of what that actually meant. So this year actually, that principal who we had that meeting with passed away quite unexpectedly.

I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, it was not a good situation. Wonderful, wonderful man and lost him way too soon. The new principal came in.

It was time for conferences. And I was like, I bet that no one told the new principal about this because in all the chaos of being ill, I'm like, this was probably not documented. And in fact, it hadn't been. And the new principal was very grateful that I was like, hey, this is what happened before because they were still using the same software scheduling tool because it had worked from the school's perspective.

It had been working just fine. And said, oh, here was the issue and here's how we resolved it. And so that's how she rolled out the conferences for the choices was one night for virtual and one night for in-person. So it was really nice because since I was there, even though I'm not part of the administrative team, I could just say, hey, just wanna be helpful and clue you in about this.

Yeah, so I mean, it sounds like what you've got is like this, which you would hope given your passion for this kind of work is you've got this good relationship. But I know many schools I talk to. Sometimes when I hear school leaders talking about parents, it can seem like, oh, it's this other challenge. Like, oh no, it's the parents like a challenge.

Do you come across that kind of with your communities? And I'm trying to think of how you start to overcome that barrier because there is sometimes a bit of a barrier that forms between the teaching community and the parent community. Sure, I think it even can rise to more than a barrier, but an adversarial relationship. And that I think is when you have the parties are not on the same page and there's no shared goal setting at all.

It is not ever the case that the goals of the parents and the goals of the school and the school leaders are not ever aligned. That's just not true. Are they always in alignment? No.

Are they mostly in alignment? Yes. So it's looking for those things where you do agree and that you can partner. And I think when parents are dismissed as being problem, like it's a problem, we don't wanna deal with them, then you're already as a school leader, gotta reframe things.

You're already gonna be coming into it with a negative energy and not in a place to properly partner with the parents, which should be your ultimate goal because it's kind of like, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. You really wanna take it to that extreme. Well, look, you have to learn how to deal with difficult people. And as an educator, as a school leader, the parents are another group of people that you have to manage.

And so you have two choices. You can dismiss them as being problematic and that you don't have time for that, or you can learn how to embrace them and use them to your advantage and really leverage that, it's up to you. Yes, I'm almost thinking that in the same way that parents can be seen as a problem and then that kind of breaks down the relationship. I think that can lead to, if the school is seeing parents as this problem to overcome, well, the inevitable thing that in my mind is gonna happen is that the parents are gonna start seeing the school as a problem, right?

Accurate. I personally have encountered a few principals and I'm like, I just gotta wait them out. Like my kids are gonna be here no matter what. I just have to wait them out.

And there have been times when I was talking to their bosses and saying, they're not a good fit there. They are not effective. They can't partner with parents. That's happened.

Because I only want the best for the school. It's not up to me who they hire, but like the superintendent is not necessarily gonna know what the building principals are doing when they're not in front of them. At one point, I had one principal who was so inappropriate during meetings and not like the levels of inappropriate that'll get you culturally canceled inappropriate, but just kind of rude and not really being helpful and kind of treating the parent volunteers like employees and making demands of them that were kind of inappropriate. I was like, I know how I'm gonna fix this.

I'm just gonna start live streaming our meetings so that parents at home can watch them. And then also, if you did anything inappropriate, I could say, hey, Dr. Superintendent, take a look at this. Here's how he's interacting with parents.

Do with it what you want, but here's some more information that you have about how he's interacting with parents, important stakeholders in the process. So in that regard, you've got a really strong online presence, Christina, with parent communities. So could you talk a little bit through what you do and that kind of support network? Because I think it's really useful for school leaders who will be listening to understand what might go on on the other side and how parents might kind of gather together and what your aims are.

Because I think sometimes you can see parents as this other thing and think, I don't know how they want to help me. And obviously, your passion is about parents helping schools and working together in some way. So I'd love to know what that looks like for you. So my main base online is I have a free Facebook community for not only parents, but also school leaders, teachers.

I don't think I have any superintendents, but I know for sure, there are several principals in that community and it's called the Superstar PTO Leaders Group. And it's just like a nice home base for people who want to improve their school community to learn how to do this. Because the most challenging thing about running a parent group, either from a parent doing it or as a school leader supervising or overseeing the parent group, is that there is no PTO school. There is nobody teaching you how to run this.

School leaders, their training, if there's a mention of a PTO, it's probably just briefly mentioned and then we move on. Like, you're gonna have to deal with PTOs at some point. Try to make the best of it. I'm just imagining what could be covered in the courses, which I think is sad, because it's, again, a missed opportunity.

But on the parent side, there's zero support. Do you have only the resources that your predecessor has left you with, which could be good or bad? You're coming into the position of whether you're fundraising chair or the president of the group with whatever life skills that you've amassed to that point. It could be really good.

You could have really great conflict management skills. Like, I'm a recovering attorney, so I have a lot of conflict management skills. I'm good at that and documenting things, you know, that's right up my alley, but somebody else might not understand the importance of that. So really, I wanted to provide just support for leaders and kind of make it like PTO school so that they could be engaged in their school communities and feel like they are educated and that they are effective and that they are able to provide meaningful improvements, that they're not just having a meeting to have a meeting where nothing gets done, you know, teaching how to set goals for your group, teaching them how to set a budget, teaching them how to run an event.

Because again, unless you've gone to school to be an event planner or have that background of being in another organization, that's a whole nother skill set that you have to develop. It's funny that because yeah, some things do get delegated. I guess the natural delegation to PTOs would be, you know, events, for example. But yeah, who's to say that the parents have that skill set and I think it's great to have a place that parents can go to go, I'm in this group, how do I make the best of it?

Right, and it's so frustrating for principals and school leaders, they have enough on their plate already. They don't need to be teaching the parents how to run this group or how to be effective volunteers or how to effectively do anything that, you know, the two groups have decided that they wanna work on together. And so that's the other reason, like I've developed resources to help support school leaders as well as the parent volunteers for any aspect of their group. That's nice.

School leaders could point parents in the direction of this or like, you know. Yeah, so they can do that or they can be, I always call it like being the captain of their own ship and being in control of their own destiny, but they could get the resources and then just have them every year to pass along to the incoming leaders, the parent leaders, because a lot of times it's the communication breakdown. I mean, how often in schools do you see a lot of good stuff happening, but it's a little uncoordinated and so not everybody knows all the good stuff that's going on because they're so busy just doing the work, that there's not the energy to say, here's all the good stuff we've done. So just like a little bit of the good news gets out there.

And so it's the same thing with parent groups that they're so busy doing the back to school night or the end of year celebration or whatever events they're doing that it doesn't get documented so that the next person coming into the role knows how to do it. Cause it's just like schools are kind of like a step and repeat. It's very cyclical, right? The same thing happened about the same time every year.

The same is true for the PTOs because they're running on the school schedule. And so if you find an event or a program that works really well, why not just repeat it? Cause then you can improve upon it rather than starting from scratch every year, which is so frustrating. Can you imagine having to start with a brand new curriculum every single year that you have to create?

Well, you know, you see all sorts when you work with schools across the world, Christina. But yes, you're right. It's not efficient. And yet there are some systems in our schools where we wouldn't usually dream of like curriculum or that you kind of resetting everything.

And yet sometimes our relationships with parent community and maybe in international schools as well where sometimes parent communities can be a bit more transient because maybe you've got an international school in the Hague in Europe and it's a lot of embassy kind of places. And that means there's a lot of families who are traveling are getting positioned in different places. Well, you need someone in the school who's kind of providing consistency. That's right.

And that's where I think it would be especially important to document and have those systems in place so that you can hand it off and they can do with it what they do. But what I find so much is that the parents end up in the school leader's office or their inbox taking up a whole lot of real estate that the school leader does not have. And so what I found is having the resources to say, go there. If you have questions, go there.

If you still have questions after you've looked through all the materials and watch the videos, go back again. I'm sure there's something there. You missed it. And then come see me after you've given it a good try so that it's not all on the school leader's shoulders because they're already dealing with so much.

That's right. This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. Now I've been working with the ICA for quite a few years but they've been around for 30 years and they've been around championing quality, unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools right around the world. I really, really love that at their core is a model for improving learning.

And this model is focused on the learning experience and they have tons of great curriculum materials, PD resources and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours. So if you're interested and I really do recommend you check them out, head over to internationalcurriculum.com. What would you recommend then?

Let's say a school, most schools have already got a parent teacher's association set up. So they've got one set up and then they're going into the new year or whatever and they've got a couple of new volunteers who are coming in. And what would you say are good first steps for leaders to support people who are coming into that role? What would you like to see from the other side?

I think it's really important for the school leader to be working directly with the parent group president, like whoever's been designated as a president, that should be their primary contact. If there are new leaders coming in, it's really on the group to kind of train them. But I would still be definitely going to like the meetings that the parent groups are having, like definitely showing up is important. Just being in the room, like just back to the story I shared at the very beginning of our conversation about the principal being there for the parent teacher conference issue.

If he had not been there, that conversation would not have happened. He would not have known about it. But just because he was there, someone thought to mention, oh, this was kind of a mess. Not sure if you're aware of this.

And he went, wait, wait, what? Because he had no clue. So I think just showing up for the meeting is really important. And just being there to like hear what are the needs.

If you go to the meeting and you can identify some areas that they could use some additional support for, then you could provide those resources. But I think it really just starts with showing up because you won't know what the needs are until you know what the needs are. Yes, I'd like to pick up on that a little bit. So that's really interesting that you said that I've spoken to a few leaders over the year who have been talking about their parent community and saying, okay, they have these meetings.

I'm not sure whether to go or not. And they've said, I want to go because I want to support and be part of it. But also I worry if I go that they're not going to be honest and open about the feedback about the schools. And I've always tended to think, well, what's the purpose of your parent teacher community?

Is it simply just a feedback mechanism to review your school? Or is it actually a part of running the operations of the school? And they almost require different approaches. I don't know if you've ever had these kinds of conversations before of should leaders, should they not be there?

It sounds like you are an advocate for them being in the room. Absolutely. I think if they even have that question, that means that they don't really have an authentic relationship with those parents, that they are not open for partnership. I think that's what that's signaling to me.

And I would challenge those school leaders to think a little bit differently about that because they're just missing out. Because I can already tell they're not really actually valuing the contributions from the parents. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah, it's almost like there's that, what we talked about, that adversarial nature is already there, maybe.

And maybe that's what's happening. Yeah, and I think, you know, if anybody's doubting like whether or not they should go or how to approach it, so here would be my recommendation. You go with information about the school, like what's going on, information that they can't get anywhere else. That's the value that the school leader can bring.

And when you show up with that currency, because a lot of times the students are not gonna be telling their parents what they did that day. I think that's totally universal truth no matter where you are in the world. You say, what happened at school today? It was good.

It was fine. We did math. We did language, you know, language arts. So like the school leader can really come with very valuable currency to trade if they want that feedback.

Or maybe they just offer it up as a gesture of, I'm valuing you enough, I respect you enough to give you an insight that you wouldn't otherwise get into the school and then just be open to hearing from the parents. They might provide feedback. I love constructive criticism. I give it freely.

I'm sure that's shocking. We just had a switch in the superintendent level at my children's school district here. I did not have the superintendent on speed dial, but she knew when I was calling that I was calling with a suggestion because I see things that are opportunities for improvement, but I won't just complain about it. I'll come with like a solution.

Like specifically this one time I was bothered because the school was putting out social media posts, promoting and shine the spotlight on some student achievements for like a local contest. I don't know if it was like a chess competition or whatever. And the wording was so old school and off putting. I said, you're not doing what you think you're doing.

You're turning people off because the post wasn't centered on the students. It was centered on the school district. The school district is so excited because a select group of students from this school attended the regional conference. Isn't that great?

Instead of saying, look at what John Frank and Alison did at the chess competition, so cool. And the superintendent, because again, school leaders don't have a background in marketing or communications. They have a background in education. That's right.

And school management. And so she was like, it just needs to be jazzier. And she goes, ooh, tell me about this concept of jazziness. And so she was fascinated by it.

And she goes, I see what you're saying. And I was like, I don't know who's doing your posts, but you wouldn't be posting if you didn't want people to read this. And you wouldn't be posting if you didn't want to increase your reach. You're not gonna get it with this.

You might get it with the way I'm suggesting. That's a little more approachable. But again, if you're not even open to that, then yeah, don't go to the meeting, but you're not gonna have a good relationship and you're gonna be missing out on a lot. What I love about kind of what you advocate for is that there is just so much power in that community and so much knowledge.

And if you can give some time to understand that community, gosh, you could really take some incredible value. Also, these are volunteers as well, who you are not gonna find anyone who wants your school to succeed more than your parent community. Who's more invested? That's right.

They're in it for the right reasons. They don't want your job. That's true. Oh, well, that must be another thing when you have teacher parents.

Like that must be a whole other level of, do you deal with any like parents who are actually leaders in schools as well? Sure. That sounds like an extra level of challenge. You can.

So again, recovering attorney here, so I like everything to be documented, you can totally solve that issue with having a really solid set of bylaws and standing rules. Basically, an agreement about how your group is gonna run, just like a contract. And so your group decides on it, votes on it. Every single group should have one.

They should not just be making it up as they go because then the rules are unclear. It's not like with a school leader and with a teacher, all of that, their job duties are outlined somewhere. Well, why not have it for a parent group too? Otherwise, you're leaving it up to the individual parents' interpretations, not everybody is in it for the right reasons.

Sometimes it's an ego play, sometimes it's a power play. Most of the time, I really believe that they're in it for the right reasons, but every once in a while, you have someone who did not learn how to play nicely with others. And so the bylaws and standing rules can keep them in check and save everybody's sanity because you can just say, look, this is what our group is all about. This explains the purpose, how we're gonna do it, how we're split up the workload.

This is to make everybody literally get on the same page so we have a common shared understanding about how the group operates. And if you're not gonna play by the rules, oh, then maybe you can't play. Yeah, that is huge for me, Christina. Like I am thinking, you know, if there's one takeaway to really think on after this episode is if you haven't got some kind of agreement in place, then that's really important.

I used to be in a school who had an amazing relationship. The parent-teacher group was just phenomenal and deeply involved. But the school had a set of kind of, you call them a standing rules, I quite like that. They had the kind of set of kind of standing rules for how should the parents show up here?

How should the students show up here? How should the teachers show up here? Like almost like a set to say, this is how we show up to the school. The shared agreement, yeah.

And we shared that responsibility. And if you wanna be part of the conversation, then you sign up to the values of that community. And I think that's really nice, Christina. Thank you for that.

Sure. So is there any kind of top tips? Like what have you been talking about recently or something? Is there any interesting insight that you think would be useful to share just in terms of establishing a strong PTO?

And maybe something, I don't know if you've got anything around working with the president because you've talked a few times about that being the most important relationship between that school leader and the president. Are there any things that you just would say, do these things because this is really gonna help? Oh, there's a whole bunch. I actually have a whole mini class about how to get a relationship.

All the steps you need to take to establish a strong relationship with the PTO via the president. It's like principal school leader training, basically. That what I think should exist for their training at university or wherever they're getting their training, it's not there. So I kind of made it up only, it's only a half an hour and I'm way more fun than any other college professor.

So enjoy. But here is a quick highlight, real sort of that. So when you have a new president, you should meet with them. Actually sit in the same room.

Get on the same page about how you guys wanna communicate. How do you best communicate? Do you want emails as a school leader? Like think about how you want to hear from the president.

Think about how you want to communicate with the president. Do you need to trade cell phone numbers? The principles that I've had the strongest relationships with, I've had their personal cell phone numbers of. So I should have also said I've been a school group leader eight years out of the 14, 15 years.

So the majority of the time I've been a leader. So, and again, the school leaders that I had the strongest, most authentic, just the best relationships with, I had their cell phone numbers. They had mine. So that if something came up that I thought might be a problem for them, because we're working here together.

Parents can't get fired. School leaders can if something comes up. So there were a number of situations, especially with the immediate last school leader, that I was like, I'm just gonna text you because I don't want this on your permanent record. So that's really handy, not necessary, especially not right at the beginning.

The school leaders had my cell phone number, but they didn't offer up theirs. That was usually meetings two or three. But you should be sitting down with them once a month just to be getting the lay of the land. Where can you guys work together?

What's coming up? You don't wanna be in conflict at minimum. The best case scenario is that you're working together. You're collaborating on things, because there are things that the school can delegate to the parent groups to make happen.

For example, have you identified that your reading levels are a little bit lower than you'd like? Maybe the PTO could run a school reading program to help boost scores. Maybe they could put together some sort of incentive program. Maybe you don't have to tell them what to do.

Just say, this is my idea, take it and run with it. But unless you're in that room with them, if the parents don't know that that's a goal, how will they be able to help? You just have to have that relationship. And then the other thing is just, again, showing up at the meetings, the general membership meetings, so that you are meeting with the other parents as a whole and providing that feedback about what is going on in your school, because they probably don't know.

Even if you said it, you get so many different communications now. It is hard to keep track of everything. So like I had a notice come home and one of my friends texted, and they're like, did you see this change? And I was like, no, when was that sent out?

They're like, oh, and the email that came out Sunday night and I'm like, it was Wednesday. I was like, I haven't even had a chance to open that yet because it's just, you know, it hits you at a really busy time in life. You have to prioritize, you can't read everything all at once. And I'm a very engaged parent.

I still think I haven't opened that email because my friend gave me the kind of the too long to read, you know, like just the summary. So I was like, okay, I know, but I haven't read it. I have no firsthand knowledge of that. So yeah, I think that would be the best advice is just establish that relationship with that president by meeting with them and offering your support to see what they need from you because parent volunteers who have, well, they all come in with different experience levels like we said earlier, but then they might know what they need them and they might not know too.

So just, I think being willing to hear from them and be a willing partner. And I've had so many different school leaders that I've worked with and there are some that clear roadblocks consistently and that, you know, they're just gonna knock them out of the way. And there are other ones that put up blocks all the time by either not communicating or by delegating the communication to an assistant principal or an assistant school leader or an associate, however it's named in your community. And so it can be really difficult.

So I think if you aim to be a roadblock clearer, then that will make your life much easier. Yeah, I really like that. The importance of making that relationship, try to get a good quality relationship. That president feels that they've got your ear, like there's a two-way communication that's gonna be equal and that you're listening to them because they're a volunteer, they've come for a reason and it would be very useful for you as a leader to know what is their reason?

You know, why are they showing up here? What are they hoping to get out? And you understanding that might actually help in the future. Well, yeah, because something might come up that is uncomfortable and think about the difficult conversations you've had in your life and the ones that you've had with people that you trusted and were on the same page with versus someone that you didn't really quite know.

How did that feel for you? That's the biggest difference because there will be a rough patch. Like I had one principal I worked with, we had such a fabulous relationship and there was one time we fundamentally disagreed about something and she let her opinion be known and I said, I'm sorry, you feel this way. The issue was we had a huge hurricane that came across the United States and Superstorm Sandy, it's been a while.

This is dating me, huge, huge storm. And we had one teacher whose family came to stay with her because their house was on the coast and it was demolished. So she had like 13 family members temporary living with her. And so we, as a parent group, decided to give her a gift card.

It was under $100. It was a very small amount and we're like, that'll get you a toilet paper for a week, you know, with all the family members that you have. And the principal objected to us giving her that money because other teachers were having issues that they didn't communicate and she felt like it was unfair. And I said, I understand your position.

This is not like we do this all the time. We don't have these big storms. This was like literally a one-time event. So I hear you, but it was not a great conversation.

We still walked out, friends, I still have her cell phone number. I still text her when I need her for different things that are unrelated to school now. But I can't imagine how much harder of a conversation that would have been and what the results would have been had we not had that strong foundational relationship of trust and respect. This episode really raised some great questions for me.

A few takeaways first, that those parent communities are really an untapped resource. There's skills, there's talents, there's connections we might not even be aware of. Second, the relationship between the school leader and the president or the leader of the parent teacher community is really critical, prioritize that connection. And finally, having really clear standing rules for your parent community or for your parent group can really create a good foundation for a healthy partnership.

I love Christina's advice about clearing roadblocks rather than creating them and that when we see parents as real partners, true partners, rather than problems to manage, we are really unlocking tremendous potential for our schools. If you'd like to connect with Christina, you can find her on our website, ptoanswers.com. You can find that link in the show notes as well as a link to her brilliant community.

Education Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning, thanks to the show editor Pete McGill and the original music by Guillermo Silva. Thank you so, so much for tuning in today and if we don't speak before, I will see you here next week. If you wanna learn more about the brilliant work from the International Curriculum Association, head to internationalcurriculum.com.