Mission Trail Middle School: Starting the year with a bang!

By Jim Bradford, Chapter Co-Chair at Mission Trail Middle School for Father’s Club

A year ago, a Father’s Club Chapter at Mission Trail Middle School was a pretty good idea, but that’s all it was, an idea. We had two co-chairs and a handful of dads with a little bit of time on their hands.

But that’s it.

Fast forward one year and the Mission Trail Father’s Club is booming! A roster of more than 100 fathers interested and willing to be present in the lives of all 700+ students at Mission Trail.

The key? A strong start and some advanced planning.

Recruitment

We hit the ground running in the fall of 2023. What started as a conversation with administration the previous spring with a handful of willing dads turned into something pretty great at Mission Trail.

Those five dads helped pound the pavement, so to speak, at the Timberwolves Ice Cream Social in early August, talking to willing dads, supportive wives and, well, pretty much anyone who would listen. Five dads quickly turned into 10 or 15.

Then after a couple of Back to School Nights, that number grew to close to 70. Our recruitment was wildly successful. Without the help from those initial five dads, nothing would have happened at Mission Trail.

Buy-in

Getting Mission Trail fathers to sign up was the easy part. Getting them to understand what Father’s Club was truly about was a bit more difficult. Explaining it as the Watch D.O.G.S. program at the middle school level was a bit too generic. It worked to help them understand there was some commitment involved, but Father’s Club is so much more.

At our initial kickoff, we had many conversations about the mission of Father’s Club.

We introduced ourselves to staff, helped a teacher clear some brush to put in a disc golf course and started our insanely popular Fist Bump Fridays.

The Fist Bump Fridays were the linchpin. Once dads got to see the kids each Friday connect with other dads, they were hooked. We had at least two dads at every Friday for the rest of the year.

And our Mission Trail Father’s Club had some legs.

Planning

It didn’t happen overnight. And it won’t happen overnight for anyone trying to build from the ground up. As we learned first hand, a little planning goes a long way.

We had some discussions about what and how much we wanted to bite off in year one.

Once that was done, we leaned into our good friends at Signup Genius. The app helped us set up volunteers for mowing and trimming the disc golf course, helped us with helpers for our night football game tailgate for the students and, most importantly, helped us stay on top of who was lined up for Fist Bump Fridays.

Year Two

We learned a lot in year one. We learned that there was definitely a need for our involvement, which was truly a fleeting thought. Were we even needed? The answer? An emphatic YES!

Our kickoff meeting this year was less of an introduction to Father’s Club, but more about how we can take it to the next level. It was a bit smaller in year two, as well, but that’s OK. We discussed tweaks instead of creations. We discussed how we can improve instead of how we can do.

We hung our hats on two big events last year – one in the first semester and one in the second.

This year, we’re going to be more aggressive and shoot for two each semester.

Starting the year with a bang was easier this year – all thanks to laying some groundwork and planning.

To get involved in the Father’s Club chapter at your high school or middle school, or to ask how to start a chapter at your school, start here!