Parent coodinators doing a great job!

The plan to increase classroom volunteerism is working, according to your feedback as well as the teachers. In fact, when we followed up the teachers, their responses ranged from "I'm getting all the help I need," to, "I am getting absolutely fantastic support." In other words, it goes from good to excellent.

We thought you would want to know that you, collectively, are doing a terrific job.

Have a wonderful holiday and keep up the good work!

-Charles and Martha

Kudos and Volunteer Plan Feedback

Hi PC's,

First of all, much thanks and appreciation to all of you for helping to create such a wonderful Halloween carnival. All of your time and effort with the booths, auction items and Haunted House truly helped to make it a fun night for everyone!

It's been a month since our last PC meeting where we launched a plan for increasing volunteerism and we wanted to know how it is going. (A previous post on this blog gives the details of the plan.)

Please give us your feedback on how the plan is working in your family group. We would appreciate if you could be specific on what is working and/or not working and as well as suggestions of things that might improve the plan.

By getting your feedback as well as touching base with the teachers, we hope to see if this approach to increasing volunteerism is effective in it's implementation, or if there are ways that the plan can be improved to better help everyone.

As usual, please email reply to both of us.

Thanks,
Martha and Charles

Classroom volunteerism plan

The following was sent to teachers today about our plan for increasing classroom volunteers:

Dear Chugach Teachers:

We had an excellent parent coordinator meeting this morning, wherein I passed on the thoughts from Wednesday's staff meeting and presented a plan Martha and I had sketched to address the challenges and opportunities of increasing volunteerism at Chugach.

Short version: Your coordinators will be contacting you for one-on-one meetings to find ways to make volunteers available to you in the most effective way for your classroom. Key agenda items will be establishing a sense of the needs (and please, think big, as we are trying for a quantum leap), setting up a communication system that works for both sides, and going over class lists and surveys to developed a shared feel for the available resources.

Your coordinators will then call each of the parents in your family group to get a better sense of their skills and availability in relation to your needs.

All this is going toward the goals of matching people to jobs so you have all the help you need, with minimal effort on your part. Our concept is that a personalized process of talking to each parent will work best. Coordinators will try to meet parents at their own level, with baby steps for those who haven't developed the volunteering habit. Their goal will be to become match-makers between the skills of individual parents and particular classroom needs.

Here is the plan as we laid it out with the coodinators:

1. Classroom volunteer needs

a. Our goal for volunteerism at Chugach

i. Better than other schools?

ii. Everyone volunteers 36 hours/year?

iii. Every teacher has all the volunteers she can use?

b. Teacher feedback and needs

i. Lack of volunteer help in the classroom

ii. Need for a strategy to get parents into the classroom

1. Identify volunteers/skills and bring in new people

2. Communicate needs to potential volunteers positively, individually (going back to pre-email days)

3. Match parents to jobs effectively

4. Reduce work load on teachers (so that PCs are point of contact)

c. Strategy outline

i. PCs meet with teachers

1. Establish communication routine between PC and teacher

a. Regular meetings or phone calls?

b. Job lists?

c. Amount of advance warning needed to get volunteers?

2. Review with teacher the class list, surveys, current participation levels

ii. Call parents for interests, availability, skills; as needed to expand on survey

iii. Communicate with teachers again to share information gleaned, begin matching volunteers to jobs.


feedback: parent coordinators seemed enthusiastic to do this and make it work. Some of their concerns were--
* Predictability for parents who need to plan their work schedule around volunteer opportunities;
* Effort at communicating with volunteers when plans change and they are not needed;
* Freshening up of job lists and improved communication of casual volunteer needs so opportunities don't go to waste--including clarifying that every parent can help every class;
* Need for diplomacy and discretion on the part of coordinators so teachers control the agenda in the classroom (your day shouldn't work around volunteers; volunteers should work around your day).

Thanks for your help on this. Please send feedback to me or Martha about how it is working out.

-Charles and Martha

PS to teachers: I regret something I said in the staff meeting, and I said it much better in the coordinator meeting. It's about how we value volunteers. In the staff meeting I put it in terms of some high-wage earner who is giving his or her time. A better way of thinking of it is a single mom with two jobs who takes unpaid time off to come in. That's worth a lot, and we should make sure such a precious resource is well used. That's the coordinator's job, and the teacher's job.

Choosing a day for your Teacher Appreciation Luncheon

Here are a couple of suggestions when choosing a day for your family group's Teacher Appreciation Luncheon.

Wednesdays or Early Release Fridays would probably work best for different reasons:

On Wednesdays, school specialists Jana, Kim W and Margritta are at Chugach during lunch bringing the total staff count to 26, however the staff has staggered lunchtimes.
On Early Release Fridays, the classroom teachers and specialists all eat lunch together, however Jana, Kim W and Margritta are not at Chugach so the total staff count is 23.

***Most importantly, once you have chosen the day of your luncheon, please let both Anne Salzer and Diane/Diana know the date ahead of time, so they can inform the staff.***

Teacher appreciation lunch schedule

Here is the schedule for when family groups are preparing appreciation lunches for teachers, arrived at through exhaustive discussion and voting.

Oct - Jean and Caycee
Nov - Kate
Dec - Sharon/Cami
Jan - Sharon B
Feb - Leigh
Mar - Kass
Apr - Heidi, Pam and Dagmara
May - Linda

Appreciation lunch vote outcome

Here at election central the votes are in and tallied. The questioned and absentee ballots have been reviewed. We do not have a write-in campaign to consider. And the winner is:

Monthly teacher appreciation lunches: 7 family groups.
Quarterly lunches: 2 groups.
Tied vote: 1 group
Did not vote: 1 group.

Here's what we'll do. There are 8 months left in the school year. The 7 groups that want to do monthly lunches can each do one months, and the other 4 groups can team up to do the remaining lunch.

Some have already requested certain months:
Kate FG: November
Sharon Brooks FG: January
Leigh FG: February
Kass FG: March
Linda FG: May


Others: if I missed your month preference in the reams of email, I apologize.

Martha and I have ordained with our coordinator scepter that the team-produced lunch will be in March, so the combined groups have plenty of time to get organized. So that means:

April: Heidi, Pam, Dagmara and Jean's FGs

Leaving the following groups to choose among the following months. First-come, first-served, by email to me and Martha (please address both so we don't get doubled up):

Caycee, Sharon/Cami
October, December

Sincerely, Charles and Martha

School-wide Surveys and Teacher luncheons

Hi Everyone,

We have collected a number of the schoolwide surveys that your parents filled out on the Open House nights, but we don't have surveys from all the family groups yet.

These surveys are a way to help us find volunteers for schoolwide activities by looking at what our parents have expressed interest in helping with. This differs from the individual family group surveys which some classes have and some don't, and if they do, they are usually specific to each class. This is why having a standard schoolwide survey will help so much.

Please turn these surveys in as soon as possible by putting them in the "Schoolwide Survey" envelope that is hanging on the small cork board in the Parent Workroom.

The votes regarding the Teacher Appreciation luncheons are slowly coming in from each family group. Please let us know if your family group prefers monthly lunches (one lunch served per family group) or quarterly lunches (groups of classes serve each lunch). We'd like to have all votes in by this Friday, Sept. 24, and we'll have the results for you on Monday, Sept. 27.

Whatever the result of the vote, the important thing is that everyone is included in the decision and we go forward together as a community.

Thanks for all you are doing!

Martha and Charles