Excellent Room Parent Resource

Occasionally you come across a site you feel like telling everyone about. We came across one and thought we would let you know about it - it is the Oak Knoll PTO site. On their site they have a great Room Parent Resource Center where they have done a wonderful job in documenting the "room parent process". It seems that some of these resources would be applicable to others too - such as room/grade parent role descriptions, agenda for meeting with teachers, sign-up and family information sheet templates (we have provided links to some docs - thanks much to this school - if you get a request for a password just click on cancel). We feel that the sign-up sheets could be handled and managed much more easily using SchoolParentNet. Our philosophy on sign-up sheets, is that it is much easier to get people to volunteer for an actual event/task/item rather than to have to make a commitment for a date/time for an unspecified task or for time periods way out in the future. With this in mind, we thought we would outline a "SPN room parent process" for someone who would like to/is using our site:

1) Meet with your teacher and figure out what information needs to be provided to other parents, what are the various activities that need to be planned, for what/how many/when do you need volunteers for in-class and outside class activities.
2) Use a family information sheet or a simple form to collect emails from class parents. You can also hand-out this flier or use this write-up in your class/school/PTA newsletter to help get the word out.
3) Request an invite through the SPN home page and Register after you receive your invitation email.
4) Create a Blog for your class - Blog Description could be "Room Parent Blog - Rm #/Teacher Name/Year".
5) Post information (as it becomes available) about announcements, activities, etc. by updating your blog.
6) Add sign-up sheets to your blog for in-class and extra-curricular activities (check out some of the example tables already pre-loaded that you can use as a starting point). Please note that you do not need to create all sign-up sheets for the school year at one shot - you can just add sign-up sheets to your blog as the date for the specific event/task nears (ex: party, field trip, carnival, etc.) or you could add sign-up sheets on a weekly/monthly basis for tasks that tend to repeat over time (ex: in-class reading/math volunteers, PE/Library volunteers, etc.). Also, our sign-up sheet feature allows the blog owner to send out reminders to all who signed-up with a single click and to print reports showing who signed-up/for what and from which school/grade/class.
7) Invite Parents from your class to view your blog (watch out for the "bulk/junk" mail issue - read this note) .
8) Ask them to set-up the "Notify me when updated" feature so they get an email when you update your class room blog.

And there you have it! You will be on your way with a very useful communication/interaction tool. As your class parents register and create profiles, your school/grade/class groups "directory" will automatically be created for you. You will not need to collate family information and print/copy classroom rosters. Parents will be able to make connections with each other through SPNs message center - enabling them to keep their email/telephone information private and giving it out to only those they would like to. Group messages can be sent to all users in your school/grade/class. You can also create interest groups for your PTC, room parents, etc.

Please note that a similar flow can be used by Grade Level Coordinators, PTO/PTC/PTA committee chairs/members. Enjoy :)