About the Founder…
Patrick Mitchell, founder of The Down To Earth Dad®, delivers passionate and entertaining keynotes, professional development trainings, and parent engagement events for early childhood programs, K–12 schools, and child-and family-serving organizations across America.
National groups — including the U.S. Head Start Bureau, Child Welfare League of America, U.S. Child Care Bureau, and state education agencies and associations — invite Patrick to speak and train at conferences and events across the country.
Over 20 years ago, he launched the National Dads Matter!™ Project to celebrate and elevate the role of engaged fathers in schools and communities—shining a spotlight on outstanding dads as visible role models for all.
Patrick has appeared on national television and radio programs, and he writes a bimonthly column for Children’s Voice magazine published in Washington, DC by the Child Welfare League of America.
Popular Events…
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT:
Patrick’s professional development events are tailored to match program/school needs. Popular early childhood program topics include Father Engagement for Educators, Story Sharing for ECE, and Staff Stress Reduction in support of work-life balance for educator teams.
SCHOOLS & PROGRAMS:
Family Storytelling Night® is an interactive celebration of parent, family, and community engagement—whether hosted once (or again!) by a school or program, or scaled as a statewide initiative.
This event promotes literacy, teaches valuable life lessons, honors individual, family, and community history (because of the true stories told), brings people closer together and, research shows, plays a role in reducing child stress. Oh, yes, and it’s FUN for everyone!
Meanwhile, Evening With Dads™ brings fathers together in program and school settings to be their best and become more engaged in what’s going on at school.
Partners & Projects…
The Down To Earth Dad partners with programs, schools, districts, and agencies connected to federal, state, or local initiatives and customarily involving parent, family, and community engagement along with other goals and objectives.
Partner with The Down To Earth Dad to bring inspiring services to your school, program, or community. Let’s make a difference—together!
Patrick lives in Idaho with his family.
See some of his recent and upcoming events.
BOOK a 15-Minute FREE CALL to…
… Ask Patrick Anything!
Keynote Address
Ask Patrick Mitchell to keynote your next early childhood or parent engagement conference, or to train (and entertain!) during breakout sessions. Upbeat. Positive. FUN!
Family Storytelling Night
Host a high-impact parent engagement and early literacy (or family literacy ESL-ELL) event that your parents will call “the most fun we ever had at a family night!”
Evening With Dads
Get your dads, grandpas, and other special guys sharing parenting challenges and triumphs (and good food!) in your lunchroom or classroom. Patrick Mitchell facilitates.
Professional Development
Patrick’s entertaining staff trainings for programs and schools boost father engagement, reduce staff stress, team-build, and facilitate goal setting. Lots of laughter!
Book a Keynote Address
Patrick Mitchell’s keynotes at national, state, and specialty conferences across America entertain and inform with cool audio-visuals, engaging insights, and space for lively interactions—dancing optional!
A father involvement segment Patrick calls How To Get Men to Do Absolutely ANYTHING—at School and Home! (a.k.a. “How to Talk to Men so they’ll Listen”) gets everybody engaged in a playful, entertaining way.
Patrick’s keynotes are customized to match conference themes, but left to his own devices his topic choices tend toward father engagement, staff/parent stress reduction, early-literacy enhancement via family storytelling, story sharing for ECE, and developing individual and group visions and goals.
Head Start Staff Training
Family Storytelling Night
Family Storytelling Night® is a highly interactive family literacy and family engagement EVENT hosted in your lunchroom, gym, or classroom.
Parents learn a storytelling method (without books) to enhance literacy nightly at home all year long, and they’ll celebrate individual, family, and community history, heritage, and culture along the way.
This high impact parent-and-family engagement event:
- Enhances early literacy—at school and home.
- Is perfect for ELL/ESL family literacy nights, too.
- Motivates your parents to attend your future events!
- Bolsters school readiness.
- Boosts parent-and-child-together (PACT) time.
- Provides colorful make-and-take projects for each family.
- Celebrates parent-and-family engagement and literacy enhancement for Head Start, EHS, and elementary school families.
- Presents great photo-ops!
- Has your parents calling it the BEST family event ever!
Patrick’s entertaining staff trainings for individual programs and schools across America help teams optimize father engagement for the sake of children’s enhanced cognitive, social, and emotional development.
Cool audio-visuals, lively conversation, role-playing activities, learning *exactly* how to talk to men so they’ll listen, father-engagement goal setting, team bonding, and staff stress reduction are components of these customized trainings.
LAUGHTER is also a big part of these events!
Your team will…
- Learn tried, tested, and perfected ways to get, and keep, men optimally engaged all year.
- Learn and practice stress-reduction strategies.
- Build stronger bonds with other team members.
- Share visions and set goals for enhanced dad engagement.
- Say this was the most FUN they ever had at a training!
Patrick Mitchell in Saipan as the honored guest of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Public School System, delivering a keynote address and professional development sessions to educators. While there, he facilitated Family Storytelling Nights on the islands of Rota and Saipan featuring stories shared by speakers of 14 native languages!
Evening With Dads
Evening With Dads™ is an interactive event for your dads, grandpas, and other special guys. It happens in your gym, classroom, or other meeting space.
You’ll serve food (of course)!
Your men will share parenting challenges and triumphs and share/learn cool parent-engagement strategies.
The Down To Earth Dad® Founder Patrick Mitchell personally facilitates with solid information, good humor, cool audio-visuals, stress reduction,and storytelling activities.
Dads learn new ways to bolster their children’s early literacy and cognitive, social, and emotional development.
You’ll build your core group of dads by hosting this event. These guys will help plan future events!
This event will…
- Get your dads more visibly engaged.
- Kick-start (or re-kick-start) your Dads’ Group.
- Inspire your men to volunteer more.
- Motivate your men to attend your future events.
Ask Patrick if he’s available for your chosen date, and consider booking a second event—a Down To Earth Dad® staff training—for the next morning.
The National Dads Matter! Project™
The National Dads Matter! Project (NDMP) spotlights your best men and makes them famous mentors, boosting father engagement across your service area, and raising the bar for dad involvement.
You’ll get articles about your dads (ready to print, copy, and hand out to everyone!) and LARGE, framed wall posters featuring your men—including pictures of your dads.
This tried, tested, and proven-effective done-for-you parent engagement and dad-recruitment resource is EASY to implement, needing less than 30 minutes per week to manage on your end.
- GIANT posters, articles, and pictures of your men monthly.
- Raises the bar for father engagement program-wide.
- Spotlights father engagement at your program for all to see.
- Each man gets his “fifteen minutes of fame” for being a DAD!
- EASY to implement; this is a totally turn-key operation requiring minimal time commitment on your end.
Recent Blog Posts
Father And Family Activities: These Kids of Ours, They Love to Play!
Father And Family Activities™ I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: These kids of ours, they love to play! And that includes, of course, the traditional Dad
A Fine Whine: How to Stop Your Kids from Talking B-a-a-a-a-ck…
By Patrick Mitchell “But Da-a-a-a-a-d…why do I ha-a-ve to go…?” I don’t want to go…why can’t I just stay here alone and play with my friends. D-a-a-a-a-a-a-d…why-y-y-y?” Most
Fathers Help Kids Read
by Patrick Mitchell Father involvement is vital to children’s academic, social, and emotional development—especially in the early years. Parents who acknowledge, and act on, this research-driven reality can give
Contact The Down To Earth Dad Today!
Book a Father Engagement Keynote Address, Staff Training, or PFCE Early Literacy Family Night, and Order Dad Involvement Tools for Your Early Childhood Program to Increase Parent Engagement all Year Long!