Parent Volunteers

October 12, 2009

This month we are recruiting parent volunteers to support the activities in our classrooms. Just as sports teams have a "Team Parent" to coordinate the snacks and practice schedules, we are asking for "Room Parents" to perform similar duties. Many parents have already responded, but a few classrooms are still lacking a parent to help the teacher out in this way. The room parent duties include planning class parties, calling other parents to bring in items for the parties, and in primary rooms, helping to total the minutes on the Treasure Reading logs. We only have a few parties each year, so the time commitment is minimal, but having this parent available to the teacher is a great help. Please consider volunteering if you have not already done so.

Parent involvement in school activities is one element successful students have in common. When parents volunteer at the school, or communicate with the teacher regularly, the children of those parents have higher achievement scores. This just makes sense--if the parent is interested in what his or her child is doing in school, they tend to support the learning at home. We have many, many opportunities for parents to become involved, and none of them are scary!! We will work with you to make your experiences here comfortable and give you tasks that you will feel successful doing. What you do is less important than just being here and being involved, because the message you are sending to your child is critical--I care about you and about you doing well in school.

We are entering the flu season, and are definitely seeing many more sick children at school. Please help control the spread of germs by teaching your child good health habits.

1. Always cover your mouth when coughing or sneezing. Many teachers have children cough or sneeze into their elbows so they don't carry the germs on their hands.

2. Reinforce the rule at school that students not share food. Again, those hands are carrying lots of germs, so sharing food is sharing germs!

3. Expect your child to wash hands before every meal.

If your child has a fever or is vomiting s/he must stay home. A child needs to be fever free for 24 hours before returning to school. That is why we tell parents, if we send a student home with a fever they must stay home the next day, too. School attendance is very important, but we certainly understand that sick children must be at home, or else everyone just keeps spreading germs around.

We have tried many ways to discourage parents from picking children up from school early, but some continue to do so, even when they know this is taking children away from critical instruction. In order to control this problem we are going to need to start keeping track of students being picked up early and refer these parents to the School Attendance Review Board when the problem becomes excessive (more than three times each trimester). I cannot stress enough how disruptive it is to the entire class when we have to interrupt the room to call a single child out to go home. It is not fair to all students to have their learning affected by parents who continually pick students up early.

Background knowledge and varied experiences are a critical component of helping children learn, so be sure to take advantage of the teachable moments around you. Take walks together and talk about the changing season--leaves falling, cooler weather, fall decorations in front of houses. Read chapter books together each night and discuss the story elements--character, setting, problem and solution. Rake fallen leaves into a big pile and let children jump into them!! Everything you do together with your child has learning opportunities so be sure to capitalize on them!

Enjoy this lovely season!

Ms. Boucher