It’s already been a long day and a struggle to get these second graders to calm down and focus during the last hour of the day. Then walks in the office secretary, who I love dearly. Due to no fault of her own, her brief visit causes more disruption that will, unfortunately, take some time to unravel. You see, she brought in that little slip of paper that tells me Louis will now go home via a different mode of transportation. The class is now off task. Louis is upset he’s not riding the bus and I’m simply trying to teach two-digit addition. I’m exhausted and just need everyone focused again. On top of that, Louis’ mom had to take a five-minute break at her busy job to call into the office to make this dismissal change. According to the office secretary, she was the twenty-eighth parent to do so already that day. Sighhh… After spending 10+ years in Schools, I know PikMyKid can help in our Classrooms.
As a former educator, I valued every second that I had the attention of my students. I valued the parent-teacher communication. I also valued how hard the entire school staff worked each and every day to help each student stay safe and flourish.
I wish my school had used an automated system that would have made all of our lives easier and just made dismissal seamless and simple. Parents, teachers, staff and students shouldn’t have to worry about dismissal and I know a more streamlined system would have put their minds at ease and allowed everyone to focus on tasks at hand. This is one of the ways PikMyKid can help in classrooms every day.
So, when I first heard about PikMyKid, I KNEW I had to be a part of this amazing, one of a kind company. The fact that they are the pioneers in comprehensive school safety and truly put the safety of children first made it a no brainer for me to join the team. Just the features on the parent app alone made me a believer. All those issues that come along with the end of the day dismissal changes would now be eliminated with the PikMyKid app and ensure PikMyKid can help in classrooms. A few features of the parent app I applaud as a former educator are;
Parent-staff communication
- As stated above, one dismissal change can become a 15-minute distraction. With the parent app, the parent simply makes dismissal changes through the app. The staff and teachers then receive the notification to their phone/ computer. This means no classroom disruptions, can I get a hip, hip hooray!?
Dismissal notifications
- With so many dismissal options, bus, walkers and car line, sometimes parents worry their child will end up in the wrong place. Many parents are still working during dismissal time also. After each student has been dismissed, the parent will receive a notification to their cell phone! This allows the peace of mind for the parent knowing their child has been dismissed to the correct place and having the exact time their student left school.
Announce, announce, announce
- For car line and walkers, it can be super chaotic and take a lot of time. You wait in a long line, give your name to the person with the megaphone and then pull forward and wait more for your child to come out. With the PikMyKid parent app, as soon as the parent is in the designated geo-fence, the parent can “announce” which puts them in line all through their phone! This allows the staff to start lining up parents far beyond the average 5 car back megaphone madness. In turn this creates an extremely efficient and safe dismissal process for parents, staff and students.
Since joining PikMyKid, all my years of working in education and in business have finally come to a culmination. Funny enough I’m still in touch with many of those families that I taught during my ten plus years in education. Now I can call Pikmykid home and continue to bring additional value to them and so many others. I feel so blessed to be able to continue helping children and families have the safest learning environments and communities.
Tonya Morningstar
AKA Ms. Morningstar