Farm Fresh Fridays Art Contest

Farm Fresh Fridays Art Contest

October is National Farm to School Month. To celebrate, we are encouraging AISD elementary school students to create artwork honoring local farmers and the use of local produce in the school cafeteria. Students are encouraged to create artwork featuring carrots.  Local, organic carrots from Johnson’s Backyard Garden, a farm in East Austin, will be served in all AISD cafeterias this spring in celebration of Farm Fresh Fridays. 

The winning artwork will be used as Farm Fresh Friday’s promotional signage and displayed in all cafeterias across the district, each time the local carrots are served. The winning student will also receive a prize pack from AISD Nutrition and Food Services. Contest guidelines and artwork requirements can be found here. For questions, contact  anneliese.tanner@austinisd.org or 512-414-0228.

Young Arts' National Arts Competition

ABOUT THE COMPETITION

YoungArts’ signature program is an application-based award for emerging artists ages 15–18 or in grades 10–12 from across the United States. Selected through a blind adjudication process conducted by an independent panel of highly accomplished artists, YoungArts winners receive valuable support, including financial awards of up to $10,000, professional development and educational experiences working with renowned mentors, and performance and exhibition opportunities at some of the nation’s leading cultural institutions. Joining a 20,000-strong alumni community, they receive creative and professional development opportunities and connect with an extraordinarily rich network of peers.

For more information about the contest and its deadlines, visit: http://www.youngarts.org/competition

7th Annual American Indian Heritage Day at the Bullock Museum

Join the Bullock Museum and Great Promise for American Indians this Friday, September 27, 2019, for a free evening program celebrating the 7th Annual American Indian Heritage Day! Explore the Becoming Texas exhibition starting at 6 pm, followed by a traditional dancing and drumming performance beginning at 6:30 pm.

For more information, please visit: Annual American Indian Heritage Day at the Bullock Museum

Save the Date for ACPTA Back to the Future 2019!

Save the Date for ACPTA Back the Future 2019!

Join us at the AISD Performing Arts Center on September 28 for a day of free family fun, valuable information, community connections and a celebration of Austin ISD’s schools and students. The event runs from 10-1.

Back the Future is a free and fun event that brings together students, families, and PTA leaders from 112 PTAs in 130 Austin ISD schools. Together, we serve almost 80,000 students. Successful students are everyone’s business, and successful schools build a successful community for all of us who call Austin home.

Exhibitor registration will open May 15.  We expect this year’s event to sell out quickly. Watch for a link here. Questions? Please email btf@austincouncilpta.org.

You can see a list of last year’s exhibitors in the ACPTA Resource Directory for 2018-2019 (in English) and the Directorio de Recursos Back the Future 2018-2019 (en español)!  You can use them online or download them for free.

You will find something here for every age group, and almost every interest or need that your campus community has. At the end of this guide, you will find resources listed by topic, language, age group and more. Many of the services and programs are completely free. More than half of the groups listed offer services and programs in Spanish. And many also offer services and programs in other languages.

Topics range from fun to serious. You will find resources to support STEM education and literacy. You will find support for student mental health and juvenile justice issues. You will find help for fun family events and student field trips. And you will find resources to offer programs for parents about topics as varied as supporting a love of reading and writing, saving and planning for college, keeping kids safe and healthy, exploring the arts, and much more. If a group does not offer a specific PTA program that you would like to see, please ask them if they will create one for you. Many will say yes!

Thank you for joining us, and for all that you do for Austin’s kids!

Girl Powered - Workshop Presented by Google Austin

Girl Powered Workshop Presented by Google (Middle School Students)

Google will be sponsoring a 2-day workshop for middle school girls, 9th , and 10th graders who are interested in learning about the VEX Robotics Competition (VRC) program. 

The Girl Powered Workshop is a collaboration between the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation and Google. In the VEX Robotics Competition, teams of students are tasked with designing and building a robot to play against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge. This 2-day workshop will be held at the Google Campus in Austin, TX.

This is open to any Middle School, 9th, or 10th grade girl who is a beginner or has very limited experience with robotics and would like to learn more about designing and building robots. We will have several trained volunteers there to assist each participant. 

Registration Instructions

Middle School students who want to attend the workshop will need to register through the RobotEvents.com Workshop event site.  To ensure you register properly for this event, please follow these directions:

1. Please create a free Robot Events account either by an adult representative or the student (13+ years old). 
2. Once the Robot Events account has been created, select the "Register" button on the Workshop website to register the student.  Adults can register multiple individuals under their own account. 

Please contact Ruben Lopez (ruben_lopez@roboticseducation.org) if you have registration questions. 

A confirmation email will be sent to the email address provided during the registration process.  If you do not receive a confirmation email, please contact Ruben Lopez (ruben_lopez@roboticseducation.org).

Meals

Breakfast and lunch will be provided for students.  Students may bring their own food or snacks if they have specific dietary restrictions.  

More Information

For more information about the VEX Robotics program or starting VEX teams in your organization, please visit the REC Foundation website: www.RoboticsEducation.org

National Foreign Service High School Essay Contest

Description: If you’re looking to help students take a deep dive into international relations, history, and writing, look no further than this essay contest. This year’s winner stood out from 1,000 submissions with her essay, “Strategic Collaboration and Constructive Communication: Lessons from US Intervention in Bosnia and Iraq.”

Age Group: 9th–12th grades

How to Enter: Each year a new prompt is published in September. Stay tuned to the contest web page so you can find it when school begins. Winners receive full tuition to the Semester at Sea program as well as a trip to Washington, DC, to meet with a leader at the Department of State.

Join the Austin Council of PTAs for the Back The Future Event on September 28, 2019!

Did You Know: The Texas Memorial Museum

TEXAS MEMORIAL MUSEUM

While preparing for the 1936 Texas Centennial Celebrations, politicians and other citizens realized that Texas did not have a state museum. It was not the first time this had been noticed, however.

Faculty at The University of Texas at Austin sounded the alarm in the 1910s as East Coast institutions took research collections out of Texas due to the lack of facilities in Texas. “If a Texas student or professor of Geology has need to examine a specimen of Dimetrodon, found ONLY in Texas Permian beds, he would have to visit a museum in Chicago, Michigan, or the East,” wrote Professor F.L. Whitney of The University of Texas at Austin in the 1920s. 

In the early 1930s, James E. Pearce, The University of Texas at Austin Chair of Anthropology, later named the museum's first director, and A. Garland Adair, department historian for the Texas American Legion, joined forces to establish a state museum.

They wanted the museum to contribute to the conservation of the historic treasures of Texas and also to the educational system of the state. With this joint effort, the Texas Memorial Museum (TMM) was born.

It was, at first, a state museum, but was transferred to The University of Texas at Austin museum of natural and cultural sciences. Both because it is a museum of The University of Texas at Austin and because it receives some direct state support, it remains committed to being a museum for all of Texas.

For more information, visit: https://tmm.utexas.edu/

Minecraft Hour of Code 09/20/19

Free, 60-minute workshop to take part in the global Hour of Code movement. Using the power of code, students aged 8 and up will explore aquatic worlds and uncover hidden treasure with the new Minecraft Voyage Aquatic tutorial. No experience with Minecraft or coding is required. Microsoft Store at the Domain, 09/20/19, 3-4 p.m.

Austin Museum Day 09/22/19

Free access to exhibits and activities at local museums on 09/22/19. http://www.austinmuseums.org/museumday/

Smithsonian Museum Day - 09/21/2019

Museum Day is a one-day event in which participating museums and cultural institutions across the country provide free entry to anyone presenting a Museum Day ticket. Participants are allowed to download one ticket per email address. The ticket provides free general admission on Saturday, September 21, 2019, for two people.
FIND A PARTICIPATING LOCATION:  Smithsonian.com/museumday/search

Anti-Defamation League's Table Talks for Parents

About Table Talk

Parents and family members often want to discuss current events and the news of the day. It's a great opportunity to engage children in rich conversation, impart important values and encourage lifelong interest in the news and the world around them. These talks can happen on the way to school, during a walk or over a meal together. Family dinner is a key time to have these discussions. Research shows that dinnertime conversation benefits the health, emotional and academic outcomes for children of all ages.

Table Talk: Family Conversations About Current Events provides parents and family members with the tools they need to engage their families in conversations about important news stories and other timely discussions about societal events. Each guide includes a topic summary, questions to start the conversation and dig deeper, ideas for taking action and additional resources.

For more information and resources, go to ADL Table Talks.

NASA Opsparc Missions

For more information, please visit: https://opsparc.gsfc.nasa.gov

TAGT: Free Parent Webinar "Nurturing Gifted Kids' Passions

Free Parent Webinar: Finding Their Element: Nurturing Gifted Kids' Passions

September 10, 2019 at 6:30 p.m.

Ben Koch, NuMinds Enrichment

 

Passion changes everything. This is the hypothesis proposed by educational philosopher and researcher Sir Ken Robinson in his book, The Element (2009). Quite simply put, “The Element is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion. When people arrive at the Element, they feel most themselves, most inspired, and achieve at their highest levels.” In this webinar, we'll learn why identifying, acknowledging, and nurturing your gifted child's passions can be the key to guiding them toward not just super achievement, but a more fulfilling and rewarding life in their "element."

For more information, visit Free Parent Webinar