Surprisingly, findings show the kind of involvement that makes the biggest difference in students’ chances for success in school isn’t what most parents might expect. More important than limiting TV time, volunteering on the school council, or even monitoring homework, there are four things that lead the pack:

• Letting your child know you have high expectations for him or her
• Talking with your child about school
• Focusing on students’ attitudes, more than their marks
• Reading to and/or with your child

In addition to the download for the Parent Toolkit, you’ll find handy tip sheets to share and download for parents, principals and teachers.

To help get the group started, team members went on field trip to the grocery store and participated in a Supermarket Tour, lead by a PDHU dietitian. The tour lasted a little over one hour, and gave students time to learn how to read a food label, how to compare similar products for nutritional content, and where to find healthy options in the grocery store.

Since then, the Health Busters have been meeting regularly to brainstorm snack ideas and ‘bust’ common snack myths. For example, the group promotes eating fresh fruits instead of gummy fruit-flavoured snacks, as gummy snack products do not typically contain any real fruit, and therefore provide little, if any, nutritional value. And the team is sure to stick to the rules – snacks must contain foods from at least two food groups, while meals must include a minimum of three. Congratulations to Anne Hathaway for busting their way to healthier eating!

Watch these health-fighting students in action at the grocery store:

Lately, I’ve begun to question the effectiveness of our current “recruiting” practices, knowing full well that there’s always room for improvement and that there’s got to be better ways to connect with parents. It’s one thing to advertise in the school newsletter, embrace technology and social media by posting here on this website, tweeting or putting it out there on facebook. But are we really connecting with parents? Or is this dissemination of information (and requests) more one-sided? Gulp. I’m thinking that despite my best intentions and efforts, it’s been the latter.

I came across this article in PTO Today by Liz O’Donnell. Although based in America, I think the message is very much the same. There’s some good information in here that I think all school councils can relate to, apply and learn from and why I’m sharing this here today. I know I’m learning more and more, and I’m being reminded, that it’s not about the volunteering itself…it’s about the relationships.

As always, I invite your comments and would love to hear from you.

9 Steps To Recruit More Volunteers

A common lament among PTO leaders is “We just can’t get volunteers.” And while it certainly might feel that way to an overcommitted, overtired board, it’s probably not completely accurate. By redefining your idea of a volunteer and changing how you respond to “I’d love to, but,…” you can tap into a wider group of parents than you might have thought were available and accomplish more than you imagined. Here are nine steps to build your volunteer base and enlist an army of unstoppable parents.

1. Set Expectations—Your Own

You’ve made the choice to serve on the PTO and you’ve thrown yourself into the role. Not everyone is going to share your energy and enthusiasm, and that’s OK. Accept that other parents may not be willing or able to log the hours you do, and be appreciative of the time they can give. The last thing you want is to send the message that a mom doesn’t care about her child because she can’t staff the book fair. Maybe she can make reminder calls or provide supplies for the event. Remember, most people start small before taking on the big tasks. The person who volunteers an hour this time may end up running the entire event in the future.

2. Prioritize the Relationship Over the Transaction

When I was PTO president, my to do list was always growing and I wanted to get things done as quickly and painlessly as possible. When a volunteer turned me down, I’d quickly move on to the next person who might complete the task when I should have been taking time to nurture the relationship. While my approach seemed efficient, it probably hurt me in the long run. “I really do think it’s about relationships,” says Haleh Rabizadeh Resnick, immediate past president of the Kellman Brown Academy PTG in Voorhees, N.J. “People get caught up in ‘I have to get an event done and I need to line these people up,’ but the reality is you have to create a relationship and find out where people are coming from.” Rabizadeh Resnick says that those relationships will pay off and that the person who says no this time might be the one who says yes the next time you’re looking for help.

3. Play to People’s Strengths

One year I decided to turn our school directory into a moneymaker by selling ad space in the booklet to local businesses. I divided up the merchants in town among different members of the board and set a deadline for selling the ads. When the deadline arrived, I was the only one who had sold anything. My mistake: assuming everyone was comfortable selling door to door. Frustrated, I decided I would have to complete the whole project myself, and I spent hours trying to lay out the booklet on my computer—something I had no idea how to do. The next year, the new board decided not to sell ads after hearing that the project hadn’t been successful. If I had slowed down at the beginning of the project and asked the other board members whether and how they wanted to be involved—selling, doing the graphics, entering the data—we would have been successful. And just maybe the $500 I raised that year would have grown to $1,000 the next.

4. Think Positive

Rabizadeh Resnick says that many PTO leaders come from a negative place when asking for vol-unteers. I see this every month at my son’s school when the Bingo Night coordinator stands up and practically begs for volunteers by telling the parents in attendance that “it’s hard to get help” and that volunteering “is really not that bad.” Rabizadeh Resnick says pleas like that actually send the message “Don’t help me.” Instead, emphasize the positive aspects of volunteering—the fun everyone has when they pitch in for a common cause, the chance to connect in new ways with the school, and, of course, the good example parents set for their children when they give their time to the PTO.

5. Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

“A lot of parent-teacher groups have a very small group of people who volunteer. Typically, it’s a group of friends who come and ask their friends to volunteer, and that’s it,” Rabizadeh Resnick says. “But you need to reach out and involve people you don’t know, too.” Look for ways to widen your circle of volunteers by connecting with those who typically don’t make it to meetings or who aren’t free to help out during the day. Draw in these parents by giving them plenty of options for vol-unteering, including assignments they can do on their own schedule from home.

6. Go High-tech

Shaun Dakin, a member of the PTO and lead room parent at Thomas Jefferson Elementary in Falls Church, Va., says technology makes it easier for people to say yes to volunteer assignments. “I need to get parents’ attention and time,” Dakin says. Websites like VolunteerSpot allow him to create a calendar where parents can sign up well in advance for tasks and events. “There are lots of dual-income parents who work a lot and have a lot of information thrown at them. So it’s my job to let them know what assignments are available,” he says. Also, at the beginning of each school year, Dakin collects all parents’ email addresses as well as cell and home phone numbers, then uses email messages and a robocall system to send requests and reminders.

7. Tell the Truth

When my best friend asked me to be her PTO copresident at our children’s school, she promised me it wouldn’t be that hard. I didn’t believe her, but I signed on anyway. One PTO volunteer from St. Louis who prefers not to give her name says, “I was bribed at a coffee shop with a cup of coffee and the promise that most of the stuff runs itself. They lied.” In an effort to get help, it’s natural to downplay the effort required. However, if we set realistic expectations, we build trust and goodwill among the volunteer base.

8. Let Go

Rabizadeh Resnick urges PTO leaders to relinquish some control even though it can be hard to do: “Something might not be done in the way you want it done and at the pace you want it done, but the reality is 95 percent of time it’s going to be pretty good.” After all, she says, “Adults are not going to come and do a shoddy job at their kids’ event.” Leaders are more effective when they manage vs. do, and volunteers are usually more satisfied when they can take full responsibility for their assignments.

9. Say Thank-you

When my son was in 1st grade, I wanted to spend time with him during the school carnival as I’d been traveling for work and hadn’t seen much of him that week. So I said no to working any shifts during the event and I instead signed up for cleanup. At 9 p.m., after a long day of work, I was finished with the cleanup and I went home. The PTO board was standing in a group talking while I worked, and they never acknowledged my arrival or my departure. In the following PTO newsletter, they thanked all the parents who planned and staffed the event but didn’t mention the cleanup crew. I didn’t volunteer again until a new board was voted in. It wasn’t that I needed public recognition. But I did want to feel that what I did mattered. “You can’t thank people who do the smallest things enough,” says Rabizadeh Resnick. “You never know how much they may have rearranged their day to do that.”

“No” Is Just the Beginning

Salespeople are trained to believe that successful negotiations don’t start until they hear the word no. Recruiting volunteers is essentially sales—but instead of selling a product or a service, you’re selling a parent on the benefits of supporting their child’s school. So the next time you hear “I’d love to, but…no,” remember that the discussion is just beginning. Here are several things you can do to turn a no into a yes.

Get permission to ask again

“I understand you can’t do face-painting at Family Fun Night, but can I call you in the future if we need help?” Most likely the parent will say yes. And if they say no, then you’ve saved yourself time pursuing a parent who just isn’t available or interested in helping.

Offer an alternative

“Unfortunately, the cookie dough orders need to be distributed during school hours and you’re not available during the day. We often need help sending out emails at night. Would that work for you?” Keep exploring until you find a way to include a parent who just may be looking for a way to get involved.

Remember the relationship

“Yes, I can imagine you’re pressed for time; I haven’t seen you at pickup. Are you busy in the afternoons?” Perhaps you’ll discover that the parent does freelance PR in the afternoons and could easily write the monthly newsletters or submit press releases to local news outlets.

Brookside Public School has recently entered the Majesta Trees of Knowledge contest where one lucky Canadian school will be awarded a $20,000 Outdoor Classroom, and they are now one of the ten finalists! Congratulations Brookside! But we need your votes to help Brookside’s Outdoor Classroom become a reality. You can vote once a day, everyday, until May 17th, 2012. So please vote now and help us spread the word! For more information, please watch this video or you can go straight to the voting booth here! Thank you!

In 2011, the theme of Family Literacy Day was Play for Literacy. I’ve taken these “Play for Literacy” tips from the ABC Life Literacy Canada website and you can find many more tips and resources here. So go ahead, break out the Bingo and board games, plan a scavenger hunt, or do a crossword together and have fun keeping those mental skills sharp and growing…mom and dad included!

Here Are Some Play for Literacy Tips:

1. Count at every opportunity. Example: “Can you get THREE spoons from the drawer, please?”
2. Have a fun alphabet chart on the kitchen wall and make up your own games to play. Example: What starts with “P”?
3. Kids read when books are at their fingertips, so put them everywhere! At the kitchen table, in the bathroom…
4. Encourage your children to teach or show you what they learned in school.
5. Challenge children to learn a new word every day, based on their age and grade level.
6. When grocery shopping with small children, name and spell out each item as you put it in the shopping cart.
7. Play lots of word games: Upwords, Balderdash, Pass the Bomb, Mad Libs, crossword puzzles, Scrabble.
8. Take the whole family to the library, have everyone pick out their favourite childhood story and take turns sharing them with each other.
9. Lead by example – read and have books in the house.
10. Listen to music of different genres – melody, tone, rhythm, pitch, etc. helps with sound recognition, which is necessary in early reading

“The reason i think technology is more fun is that you get to try new things and experiment instead of doing the same thing all the time.”

“The technology helps me focus on my work and I think that I pay more attention and I feel that I can do work quickly and more efficiently.”

“…it makes school allot better in my opinion that’s really the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning…”

“Another reason why we should be allowed to use technology is we develop new skills that may be helpful in the future.”

“I would much rather use and iPad than a text book. What would you rather do? You can probably get an app for a text book on an iPad. Could you imagine the the space in your desk if you didn’t have a text book?”

“For the reasons of making it easier to work on things, helping with school work, getting kids used to the different electronics company’s are now producing, and prevention to global warming I think it is good for school to have electronics in there classrooms.”

The idea to organize an Ignite Parents event came from the Ignite concept itself. Ignite is a community building speaking event hosted in cities all across the world where people gather to share their passions and ideas using 20 slides that auto advance every 15 seconds for a total of just 5 minutes. The motto of an Ignite event is: “Enlighten us, but make it quick!” We loved that idea and the unique format, so we decided to adapt the Ignite concept and narrow the focus and theme to education.

Ignite Parents promises to be a fun and exciting evening with inspiring presentations by passionate people. The event is free and open to all, there will be displays, plenty of great food, refreshments, door prizes, live music, a cash bar and of course, some fabulous presentations! For more information and to register for Ignite Parents you can visit our website at IgniteParents.ca  I hope you’ll join us at the Arden Park Hotel, Wednesday, May 2^nd from 7 to 9pm. And prepare to be engaged…prepare to be enlightened!

The “Idea Hive”, created by teachers Heather Durnin of Turnberry Central Public School and Clarence Fisher of Joseph H. Kerr School in Snow Lake, Manitoba, brought two class rooms together from very different parts of the country.

United in cyberspace via skype and chat sessions, these grade 7/8 classes worked together creatively over the past year as part of an educational partnership that eventually resulted in the professional publication of their own book, “A Field Guide to Molching”. The book describes the Idea Hive, “As a classroom like no other where students from two provinces work together every day. This project is one of things that can happen when people re-imagine what school might be like.”

I say, no need to re-imagine…it’s here! Kudos to these innovative educators and students for taking their shared learning to a new, global level! View the full story on the makings of, “A Field Guide to Molching” here: