September 14th meeting minutes

We had a very informative meeting of Conway AGATE on the 14th. Dr Murry gave us some great information about the district and mentioned that he sees an opportunity for the district to increase the level of communication with the GT parents. The minutes of the meeting are available here.

We would like to welcome the 11 new members who joined at the meeting! If you have not yet sent in your dues, please send a $10 check to Conway AGATE, PO Box 10323, 72034. The money we collect from dues allows us to promote our meetings, register with the state AGATE, and last school year we were even able to offer a travel grant to two of the National History Day contestants who otherwise would not have been able to afford to attend.

Our next steps are to schedule the workshops that will answer a parent’s biggest GT related questions.
*Information targeted at K-2 parents will be included in the workshop “Should I nominate my child for GT and how can we prepare?”
*For 7-9 parents the workshop would cover topics like “How to prepare for college financial aid right now” and “The differences between co-curricular credit and AP credit”
*For 10-12 parents a college fair is planned that will help answer questions about ACT/SAT testing, selecting from the different types of schools, etc.

Separate committees will be formed for each workshop. Please respond to to the blog editor if you are willing to help. We will need subject matter experts, event organizers, as well as help with publicity.

UCA Community Language School

UCA Community Language School

I almost waited too late to post this! UCA is offering their language school for children (PreK - teen and beyond) starting the week on Sept 22. This is a great chance to learn French, Spanish, Chinese, German, Japanese or Arabic.

Education Expo in Little Rock

Little Rock Family - Central Arkansas Parents Magazine for Childrens Events, Activities and Schools

Little Rock Family magazine is hosting the Little Rock Family Education Expo next Saturday 10-2 at the Metroplex in Little Rock. While most of the vendors will be Little Rock schools, tutoring centers etc, there are also free parenting workshops and enrichment activities for kids.

Here is a list from the website of the parenting workshops being offered

10:10 – 10:40 am - James Marshall, "Soft-Spoken Parenting"
10:50 – 11:20 am - Dr. Nick Long (or other), Center for Effective Parenting, "Making the Most of Parent-Teacher Conferences"
11:30 - noon - Kyran Pittman, author/blogger, "The Hows and Whys of Mommy Blogs"
12:10 – 12:40 pm - Neal Best, Learning Rx, "Impact of Cognitive Skills on Student Achievement"
12:50 – 1:20 pm - Roxanne Dority, Learning Disabilities Association of Arkansas, "Learning Outside the Lines"
1:30 – 2 pm - Janice Edmonson, Technology Coordinator, ACCESS Schools,"Tools to Help Struggling Students"

Operation Bottleneck

{Not specifically GT related but of interest to all Conway drivers}

Operation Bottleneck by the Log Cabin Democrat
Metroplan is holding a town hall style meeting tonight to hear from Faulkner County residents about traffic concerns and suggestions. Operation Bottleneck is an effort by Metroplan to identify traffic areas that concern or frustrate residents. Whether it is the frustration of hitting every red light in town, or just areas where traffic congestion has become a problem because of rapid growth, Metroplan officials are holding the meeting to identify problems and hear possible solutions.
The meeting will be tonight from 5-7 p.m. at the McGee Center, 3800 College Ave.
Rapid growth in Conway and parts of Faulkner County constantly changes our infrastructure. Simply put, some roads and streets that weren't problem areas five years ago are now. That's Metroplan's goal, to identify existing and future problems.
Those who cannot attend the meeting are asked to submit a questionnaire that can be obtained from the organization's Web site, www.metroplan.org. If you can't go to the meeting tonight, take a few minutes to fill out the online survey and submit it back to Metroplan. The greater participation the organization has, the greater our chances at improving our area's infrastructure.

Conway AGATE fall meeting

Conway AGATE has scheduled the fall meeting for Sunday, September 14th at 2:00 pm at the St. Peter’s Episcopal Church Parish Hall. (Corner of Prince & Mitchell Sts., across the street from C.H.S. East)

Superintendant Murry will be the speaker for this meeting.

Here is a link to the flyer which you should also recieve from your school.

There are a lot of new things planned for the upcoming year so we hope you can attend this meeting!