Reflections

Welcome to the 2024-2025 Reflections contest for Arlington county!

April Maddox will be our CCPTA Reflections Chair, helping our local units run their Reflections contests, and wanted to share the information below. April can be reached at reflections { @ } arlingtonccpta.org with questions (new email - please update your address books).  


1) Theme: The 2024-25 theme is "Accepting Imperfection."  Even if you haven't ironed out the details for your school contests yet, I encourage you to send an announcement to your school-level PTAs ASAP informing students/parents of the theme for this years' contest so that students can begin preparing.  Beautiful art does not happen overnight (it took five years for Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel) so the more time we give these students to prepare, the better.

 2)  Virginia PTA Reflections Informational Meeting: Virginia PTA hosted a virtual Reflections informational meeting on Tuesday, August 27th at 7pm.  A recording of this meeting can be found here. 

3) 2024-25 Deadlines: The deadline for the county-level contest is Sunday, December 15th. This means that your school-level contest deadlines should be approximately two to three weeks before then so that you have time to judge your school entries.  

After you have determined your school-level winners you should do the following no later than December 15th:

·      Enter the pertinent information for your school-level winners into this Google Doc.

·      Upload pictures/videos of the artwork into this Dropbox Folder using the following naming convention:

Art. Division. SchoolPTA. StudentLastName

 

example... Dance. Primary. AbingdonElementary. Smith

* Remember, you many only advance one entry per category/division from your school-level contests to the county-level contest.

4) Virginia PTA Reflections Webpage:  The National PTA Reflections Webpage includes downloadable logos, posters, flyers, and social media images.  While this webpage is very informative, you will be able to find more important documents on the Virginia PTA Reflections Webpage, including an entry form/rules.

5) Entry Form:  The official 2024-25 Reflections entry form can be found here.

To complete the top portion of this form, you will list your name/contact information as the Reflections representative from your school.  You will also list your PTA unit number, the date your schools' PTA bylaws were last approved (should be within the last 5 years), and the date your school last paid PTA membership dues (should be within the last year).  I would reach out to your schools' PTA president/treasurer for this information.  If they don't have this information, I would call the Virginia PTA office (804-264-1234).  You will also enter the following information on the entry form.

Council PTA - Arlington

District PTA - Northern Virginia

Region PTA - Northern

State PTA - Virginia

6) Finding Judges and Judging Instructions: I would start reaching out to potential judges for your school-level contests.  Attached please find Judging Instructions to share with your judges and to assist you with solicitation of judges, if necessary.  I obtained this from the local leaders guide on the Virginia PTA Reflections website.  

7) No School Chair/Contest:  If your school does not have a chair/its own contest but your school has students that want to participate in Reflections, please email reflections@arlingtonccpta.org by November 1st for instructions on submission.