What does MAIN stand for?
Minnesota Advocates for Immersion Network

What is this group about?
MAIN Parents was created by a desire to connect parents of children with similar educational circumstances, goals and obstacles. The group is a highly energized, productive network of immersion parent leaders throughout the metro area whose common goal is to support and enrich immersion education and foreign language learning, as well as serve as a resource for immersion parents through bridgework of relationships


What is the difference between MAIN and MAIN Parents?
MAIN Parents is parent companion to MAIN which is an organization that includes immersion administrators, specialists and teachers. The goals of MAIN Parents mirror those of MAIN: encouraging and supporting discussion, collaborative problem-solving, pooling of resources, sharing successful school initiatives, and advocating for immersion education at all levels of administration. MAIN was established in the 1998-99 school year through CARLA (Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition) administration.

How long has MAIN Parents been around?
MAIN Parents was initially organized in April 2004 through a school Site Council initiative.

Who can be a member?
MAIN Parent membership is open to any immersion school in Minnesota. Parent representation from each school is annually requested. School representation is appointed by either the school PTO/PTA President or the Principal, to either a PTO/PTA or Site Council board member, but can also be appointed to someone who has a desire to participate and an interest in immersion networking.

How much time does it take?
MAIN Parents meet monthly throughout the school year for a (2) hour block. Members are occasionally asked to bring to the meeting school material pertaining to the agenda which may require a small degree of preparation. Action work is sometimes requested beyond this time.

Who runs the group?
The group currently uses a shared-leadership style in which schools take turn hosting and running each meeting.

What are the meeting topics?
Current and past meeting topics discussed include: Website Initiative, Fund Raising and PTO Budgeting, Volunteerism, Immersion Classroom Teaching Assistant Programs, Parent Leadership Groups such as Site Councils and PTO/PTA, All-School Events, PTO/PTA Meeting Topics, Community Relationship Building, and Lobbying strategies for Immersion Education. The agenda topics have been especially helpful to newly organized immersion schools providing a starting place and resource for ideas. Sharing ideas on these topics have also been helpful to inspire new vision for veteran schools.

Also on the radar of annual discussion and task work is current legislative action in regards to increasing effective communication within the immersion community statewide with the purpose of assisting new programs, creating a ‘think tank’ for problem solving strategies, and most importantly, establishing a unified immersion voice to best meet the needs of successful immersion education, such as funding, staffing and public awareness.

What are the current goals?

Website Development:
The continued development of a website designed for parents of immersion education to serve as a resource containing best practices for parent leadership groups, links to related topics for parents and students, listings of cultural events, links to immersion schools statewide, and updated MAIN Parent activity.

Group Discussion:
Maintaining our meetings and topic discussions, this continually enhances our bridge building toward statewide immersion strength.

School Mentoring:
Taking an active part and being available as a resource for newly established immersion schools and their parent community.

Immersion Celebration:
MAIN Parents annually assists MAIN in an Immersion Celebration which is a showcase of performances by Minnesota immersion school students. Entire grade levels are invited to attend and participate in the celebration. Attendance numbers have been as high as 700+. MAIN Parents assists in the on-site and backstage coordination of this event.

Positions and Responsibilities

NOTE: By means of self-nomination and consensus, positions are selected at the end of each year for the upcoming year’s service.

Coordinator:
- Coordinate the start of the year activities
- Facilitate filling the positions
- Facilitate the calendar of meetings
- Liaison to MAIN Administrators general and executive meetings
- Communicate as needed the MAIN Administrators information to MAIN Parents

Secretary:
- Maintain email list of current members
- Disburse information to members
- Take minutes for all general meetings
- Disburse minutes for general meetings to members via email
- Maintain the MAIN Parents Handbook containing all documented activity including agendas and minutes

Website Coordinator:
- Coordinate / maintain / delegate task work required for website production

Lobbyist:
- Serve as the groups point person for all legislative and lobby communications
- Coordinate and delegate any task work to members and their schools

MAIN Liaison:
- Liaison to MAIN Administrators general and executive meetings
- Communicate as needed the MAIN Administrators information to MAIN Parents

Member:
- Disburse general meeting information to your parent leaders and school as needed
- Attend or designate school representation to all general meetings
- Recruit school representation for upcoming year

HostSchool:
to provide via email at least one (1) week prior to meeting:
- Meeting reminder (using the email master list provided by the Secretary)
- Agenda (using the template provided by the Coordinator)
- School address and phone number (Mapquest direction is suggested for attendees.)
- Call the meeting to order and facilitate the Agenda
- Provide beverage and light snack during meeting time

General Meetings
General meetings take place on the 3rd Thursday of each month from 9:30-11:30a.m. The first 15 minutes is used as a social gathering time and the agenda items begin at 9:45a.m. School Tours are available upon request immediately following the meeting. RSVPs are helpful but not necessary.