Originally posted by rocket: It recently won Midwest Living Magazines Champions in Education contest and a $10,000 award.
I can certainly see why! I visited your site since I planned to eventually set up a volunteer site. I printed off the home page and took it to our principal on my lunch break, I was so impressed by it. She was very receptive and I'm actually going to use your project to launch our membership drive. Thank you for providing this service.
We do something similiar. I had developed a program but it did not go far. I had the idea of giving "tasks sheets" to teacher. If they needed help the volunters could look at a bulletin board and do whatever needed to be done. I also had a list of volunteers who were interested in being in the program their numbers and email addresses were available to the teachers or the teachers could ask me or a board member to contact someone. Another part of the program was a newsletter in additon to our PTO newsletter. I had to resign as Volunteer cooridinator and I really miss it. It can be very fun job and I am all for encouraging parental involvement.
I probably have most of my info somewhere. My email address is carmieb93ATyahoo.com if you are interested, I could probably find something.
We just instituted this position as one on PTO called the In House Copy Coordinator. One mom chairs the position and calls others to come in on certain days of the week to do copying for the teachers. Teachers fill out a request form at least 2 - 3 days prior to their need for the copies and then we do them and put them in their mailbox. It has been so well received, the teachers are available for other activities and are thrilled with this service
The "strategy" part is like this - we put in the program, explain what the idea concept is (what the teacher would like to see happen, what PTO thinks would be good involvement ideas, etc), then prompt both teachers and parents to take it over. At first the teachers kept doing things themselves, because they weren't used to getting support, or approaching parents like me that are around to ask for help. And parents would talk to other parents (different classrooms) about ideas. Brainstorming is great among classes, but when we hear parents sharing ideas, we encourage them to share their ideas with teachers, too. Most of them are just afraid to be told "no" (on both sides). So they don't ask. Our pricipal has been a big help. When people come to him, he suggests they go through the room parent. And we've tried with limited success to get room parents to be a part of fundraisers. It worked for the individual classroom, but not on the overall school level. I'd love to hear success stories about other room parent programs!
What exactly is your "Room Parent strategy"? Our romm parent program, implemented this year, isn't going as well as I'd like... I could use some info on how to make it more successful!
