Spring will be here before we know it! The months ahead will be exciting and challenging for our Walker Star students as many of them prepare for TAKS and as they continue to learn. PTA has many exciting things planned for the rest of the year and I wanted to share all of the great things that are upcoming for our Walker Star families!

 - Spring Student Assemblies: February 7th— “The N.E.D. Show” encourages students to Never Give Up, Encourage Others, and Do Your Best. May 3—Darren Collins, a comedian who presents a character building program on respect, bullies and self-esteem.

- Class Parties: February 14th- Valentine Parties and June 1– End of Year Parties. All parties are at 2:15pm and we encourage parents to join our celebrations!

- Also, on February 14th—at 1:45pm please join us for our PTA Regular Meeting. We will vote on any changes to our budget and standing rules, update you on upcoming PTA plans and select our Nominating Committee to elect our 2011 PTA Executive Board.

-2011-2012 PTA Executive Board— Looking for a great way to serve our Walker Star students and staff next school year? Consider serving on our PTA Board! It’s a wonderful opportunity to share your talents, your creativity and your ideas to bring great programs and events to our children. It’s also a great opportunity to work together as a strong team of parents, in conjunction with the Walker staff to give our students the best. Detailed information will be sent out in February, but if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Trysh Pope at tryshpope@gmail.com.

- April 7th—Bring your lunch and join us at 12pm for PTA Board Officer elections and a parent education program on “Mean Girls and Cyberbullying.”

- February 18th—Family Fun Ice Skating Night at Dr. Pepper StarCenter in McKinney

- March 25th—Family Fitness Night—PTA will be partnering with the Walker Staff for an evening of fun activities for all of our Walker families to enjoy!

 - March 7-11th—Teacher Appreciation Week—Details will be available soon on a week of great ways to honor our teachers and Walker staff for all they do for our children every day!

- Get those recipes ready! The PTA Spring Fundraiser will be a Walker Cookbook! We are very excited about coming together as a community to create our very own cookbook! We’ll start collecting recipes in February and the book will be available in late Spring.

 - Yearbook—Our 2010-2011 full-color Yearbook will be full of the amazing memories of the year!

 - Our Go Van Gogh and Junior Achievement programs offer our students enrichment in their classrooms. Go Van Gogh is a program in conjunction with the Dallas Museum of Art and Junior Achievement introduces economic education. Both programs are only possible because of our amazing parent volunteers—THANK YOU to volunteers who give their time for our students!

- May 13th—Variety Show—Our Walker Stars get to showcase their amazing talent!

- Our Chess Club and Green Club are going strong! Thank you to all the great volunteers who arehelping our students pursue their areas of interest!

- Box Tops for Educations—Keep clipping those Box Tops—we’ll see which grade collects the most!

- Our Parent Link program continues! If your child does something to show kindness at home, we would love to share that with the Walker community by adding Links from Home to our acts of kindness chains at Walker. White chain links are available in the Walker Elementary Office.

I am so proud to be a part the vibrant community that is Walker Elementary and feel blessed every day to work with all of the amazing volunteers who truly Make The Difference for our Walker Star students and staff! THANK YOU for all that you give! Our PTA Executive Board is proud to serve Walker. Please don't hesitate to contact me or any of our Board members with your comments or suggestions.

Trysh Pope — tryshpope@gmail.com –OR– 214-592-0748