We have been doing one of these for years. It actually never occured to me that other folks did not do something similar. We call ours a class parent tea and we hold it one day in Sept. right after school ends. Eveyone meets in the gym and we serve refreshments and the teachers attend as well. We hand out a class parent handbook that gives them all the info they need including their class lists. We go over the handbook and answer any questions. Then the teacher's go back to their classrooms with their class parents to have a more personal meeting as to exactly what specific things that teacher might want.

This is so great! I have been working so hard putting together a notebook for our room parents and planning for our room parent meeting. I have included a lot of the things you listed, like a class list and a volunteer form filled out by parents, along with a calender of school events and and welcome letter, detailing all of the events that we will need their help with, along with a 1000 Grand candy bar and a quote about volunteers being priceless. What are your teachers asking you to add?

At the meeting I was planning on a mini training session for newbies, like how to work the copier, laminator, where the teacher lounge and bathrooms are, etc. Can you think of anything I might be missing? When I read your post, it was everything I have been working on and it was great to see how wonderful it worked out. I like how you have teachers at the meeting. i am goign to work on that next.

I do have a couple of teachers who say they do not want room parents because of past experiences. Any advice on how to work with that? I am hoping that once they see the info I have put together for the parents that will help some.

Also, tell me about the gift registery. I love the idea!

Thanks so much for your post! You ROCK!!!

Brandi

Last year, our PTO tried something new, and it turned out great!

We needed to be in contact with parents who like to be involved, and we'd heard a lot of parent and teacher complaints about room parenting. Some complaints were about the basket auction and our events being 'too much'.

So we sent e-mails to the teachers and collected the names of the room parents for the first two weeks of school. We sent nice invitiations inviting each room parent to a Room Parent Training Meeting. We set out snacks, provided a paper notebook with ideas, and gave them a nice PTO Volunteer name badge to wear into school (they would usually have to fill out a big yellow sticker each time they signed in).

Our PTO moms, representing decades of room parenting experience, put together a list of party ideas including games and snack suggestions, a class list with phone numbers for their class and one with our PTO numbers, a calendar and a separate date list of events (school parties and the aforementioned basket auction), a 'gift registry' for the teacher and parapro to fill out, etc. 0ne of our teachers made a sample basket for the parents to see.

It was a casual meeting, and we walked them through the notebook, asking for their ideas as well. The parents loved it! One mom said "This is my first year as a room parent, and I feel SO much better about it now!"

This year we are including some other information from teachers, and have asked two teacher reps who are great with room parents to come be a part of the evening.

We have around 50 classrooms, and we had a turn out of 60 room parents (many were teamed up as pairs). I think we only had a handful of classrooms unrepresented, in which case we sent their notebooks through the classroom. We did a morning and an evening session last year and had an exactly equal amount show up at each.

We also e-mailed copies of the notebook contents to the teachers, in case their class needed to replace a room parent, they'd have what they needed as well.