If you’ve driven down U.S. 41 in Lee or Charlotte County recently, you may have noticed some black and white billboards addressed to DAD. One reads: “teach your son to be an upstander, not a bystander.” Another asks, “DAD: What are you teaching your son about girls?”
The billboards are from All Pro Dad, a non-profit organization founded by former NFL coach Tony Dungy. Its website says the organization “is on a mission to help men love and lead their family well.” The organization claims the program is in schools in 46 states. In Florida, it lists schools in Lee, Collier and Charlotte counties, among them, Meadow Park Elementary in Port Charlotte.
Meadow Park is not your typical Charlotte County school. Ninety-nine percent of its students come from low income homes. Twenty-five percent are in special classes for those with emotional, medical, or intellectual disabilities.
Three years ago, the school adopted the All Pro Dads and the companion I-Mom curriculum. Over time, the two were merged and have morphed into Meadow Park’s own unique family support program called All Pro Family. Once a month, it hosts a breakfast for students to attend along with a parent, guardian or other relative.
One Wednesday in October, about 40 students—each with an adult—started their morning in the school’s library at 7:30am. They were greeted by Christy Bishop, a former fourth grade teacher and now the schools’ academic coach, her husband, the school’s child psychologist, Dr. Bo Bishop, and the school’s principal, Asena Mott.
Bo Bishop explained their program is centered “on things that families can do at home to support their students at school, and ways the school can help support the families at home.” The point, he said, is to strengthen the school-home connection.
“Because if students are being successful at home,” Bishop said, “it helps them to be successful at school.” They do this by talking about strategies and positive things that parents and students can do together, at home, and by having these conversations and exercises at school, they reinforce the school-home connection.
On this particular Wednesday morning, Christy Bishop introduced the morning’s exercise by pointing out that each family had a tube of toothpaste on their table. Her challenge to them was to see how fast they could squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube. But that was just the beginning of the morning’s lesson—and it was a ruse. Because when the laughter and chaos settled down, she said that the timer was now reset, and she wanted adults and kids to work together to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
A minute later, she and Dr. Bo quieted the room down, and Christy explained the real lesson. “Was it easier to get the toothpaste out of the tube or was it easier to put the toothpaste back in the tube?”
Kids enthusiastically shouted out the obvious answer. “So I want you to think of the toothpaste coming out of the tube,” Christy Bishop said. “I want you to think about that like words that come out of our mouths or the actions that we take. They come out very, very easily, but once we have said something, can we just put it back? We cannot.”
The next step was to ask each family group to talk about times when they say or do things they might regret, and after five minutes it was clear to an observer walking past the tables where conversations were taking place that the toothpaste lesson had connected.
Watching the morning’s activity begged the question, why is it the school’s job to do this? Why are they going so far beyond teaching reading, writing and arithmetic—especially at a school that is consistently rated “C” on the Florida Assessment Test?
Principal Asena Mott rejects the notion that the quality of a school can be summed up in a letter grade earned on a standardized test. “This is my 21st year in education, and things are very different now than when I started years ago, in the fact that families look different, kids look different, raising children looks different, society looks different, everything is different,” said Mott. “The result of this radical change is that parents are not sure how to teach their kids and raise their kids.”
As a consequence, Mott said, “All of us need to work together. How do we teach digital citizenship? What do we do with kids who are now nine and ten years old and have cell phones. When those parents were nine and ten, they didn’t have cell phones. So they didn’t know how to teach their children because it didn’t exist, and it just goes on and on, the ripple effect gets bigger and bigger. We don’t always know what we don’t know.”
So Meadow Park developed its All Pro Family curriculum to help its unique student body. “It doesn’t give exact answers to how old a child should be when getting a cell phone, said Mott. “It doesn’t give exact answers for—this is the specific amount of screen time your child should have. But we do give some great examples what it might look like if your child spends more quality time with you around the dinner table.”
But why is it the school’s job to do this—especially in the face of academic challenges? It’s a question Mott and her staff are regularly asked, by both parents and school administrators. She’s thought about it a lot. “The school’s job doesn’t end,” said Mott. “We are more far-reaching now than ever before in society and that can be attributed to a number of things. We’ve got more grandparents that are having to live at home because of economics. And families moving in with other families. There aren’t enough beds in the house at times; there isn’t enough food in the pantry. So school has become a place where we make sure our kids are fed; we clothe children here. If they come to school and they don’t have the proper attire, we take care of it. That happens several times a day. From undergarments to sox to shoes to outerwear.”
And then there are students who come from homes where life can be very difficult. “Their families have those in jail, we have those who have been abused in various ways,” said Mott. “We have students who have some mental health issues. We have students who live with family members who have mental health issues. And the list just goes on. Those who are in foster care, those who are living with people that maybe would prefer the child would not live with them. Our kids are pretty needy.”
“So the school has become caretakers, and we’ve all accepted that role very happily, because you cannot educate a child academically if their bellies are hungry., said Mott. “And if their feet are blistered and sore because they don’t have the right shoes. So we take very seriously the role of making sure our kids are healthy all the way around, and that—once we fill up their bodies we can fill up their brains.”
At the conclusion of the 45-minute All Pro Family breakfast Christy Bishop invited the students and guardians to return in a month for the next breakfast, and to participate in other family oriented events at the school such as a Family Reading Experience and Family Math Night.
The bottom line for the staff at Meadow Park: to encourage moms, dads, grandparents or other significant adults to become actively involved in their child’s life—especially at school.