10 Ways to Volunteer at Your Child's School

TEN WAYS TO HELP YOUR CHILD’S SCHOOL

Research tells us that parents and family members can make a difference in their child’s education by being involved in their child’s school operation. There are many ways you can be a part of your child’s education that go beyond coming to school events. Here are ten ways parents and family members can help their community school provide the best education possible for all children.

1. Join the PTA/PTO. Support the Parent Teacher Association by becoming an active member. The PTA provides opportunities for adults to support school programs, become advocates for educational change, and to gain leadership experience qualities.

2. Attend School Board meetings. Be informed about your school district and how educational policies are enforced. Be an advocate for your school and for your child’s education.

3. Donate a book and school supplies. You can help a child with needed school supplies or books by donating items to your community school.

4. Share computer skills. Offer to lead computer training sessions for other adults or students in conjunction with the PTA program director or school principal.

5. Share time and talents. Maybe you have a special hobby or skill that you can demonstrate to a group of students. Share your idea with the school principal.

6. Organize a field trip. Communicate with your child’s teacher about special community venues that would be valuable learning experiences for students and help to organize a field trip for a class.

7. Start a cleaning crew on school grounds. Maybe you enjoy working on landscaping and would be willing to organize a “grounds beautification” committee to improve the landscaping at your community school. Share your ideas with the school principal to get this started.

8. Volunteer at the school library. Help to shelve books, assist students select books, donate money to buy new books, and read to children. Talk with the school librarian and have your name added to the volunteer list.

9. Volunteer to be a ‘book buddy’. If your enjoy reading with children, the book buddy program pairs adults with young readers to give them extra reading time at school. Talk with your school principal if you would like to work with the reading program.

10. Work at home for school. Ask your child’s teacher if there are tasks that you can do at home that would help out in the classroom. You can help to fold paper into writing booklets, cut out shapes, staple packets together, or sort items into bundles. Your help can free the teacher to do other curriculum studies.



Maybe this list will help you and your family to become an educational partner with your community school. By becoming a partner in the school, you are showing your child the importance of a good education and how families and school personnel can work together to ensure that all children can be successful and achieve high expectations.

Creating Independent Thinkers

Helping Children Make Good Decisions


As parents, we want our children to make good choices and have the “right” answers. But making decisions for our kids does not give them the practice they need for making decisions for themselves.

Decision making opportunities will strengthen the brain and actually make it work better. The brain is like a muscle and needs to be exercised. By using the brain through critical thinking exercises, the brain begins to function stronger and perform better. When it is ignored, the brain doesn’t develop optimally therefore losing some of its power to function. That’s what we mean by “use it or lose it”. But you can make a difference for your child. Provide lots of opportunities to exercise decision making and problem solving activities through questioning, playing games, and discussing life situations.



A simple exercise to use with young children to help exercise their brain is to give your child choices. For example, asking your child, “Do you want to wear the red shirt or the yellow one?” When you offer a choice, the child has to “think” about his answer. This simple activity stimulates the brain cells into action. Then as kids get older, you can give them more responsibility in decision making. Allow your child to work out a scheduling conflict when two events occur on the same date. Let your child decide which one to attend rather than you making the choice.



An allowance is another terrific way to give older kids practice with decision making. This becomes a powerful way to exercise the brain when a dilemma arises on how to spend the money or whether to save it for later. The point is to let your child wrestle with the decision and allow him/her to live with the consequences. The main thing for you as the parent to do is try to avoid resolving all of your child’s problems. You want to be supportive but give your child a chance to make minor mistakes and learn life’s lessons along the way.

Word Games Equal Student Success

Having Fun with Words

Do you want your child to have a successful learning experience in school? Of course you do! Reading research tells us that children need to have a robust vocabulary in order to be successful in all content subjects. By developing a strong vocabulary for listening, speaking, reading, and writing, children will have a higher achievement rate on their standardized testing, reading comprehension, and academic progress. A fun way to increase vocabulary is through word games. Try some of these suggestions to excite your child about learning vocabulary.



Charades

Use vocabulary words, history or science terms, geometric shape words, famous names, places or things. Take turns “acting out” and guessing the words. This is a great game to use dramatic expression and to build vocabulary knowledge. The whole family can enjoy this game, as one member uses body movement and hand gestures, without talking, to describe the mystery word.



Password

This game is played by giving one word clues to guide the partner to guess the mystery word. This is a great way to practice synonyms and antonyms and to assess your child’s understanding of the word’s meaning.

This game can be done with two sets of partners. Partners A select the mystery word and takes turn giving one word clues to partner B. The first B partner, who guesses the word correctly, earns the point. Then Partners B selects the mystery word to give A’s a chance to guess. The team with the most points after 10 words, wins the game.



Scattergories

This is a fast thinking categories’ game. Players make a list of words that begin with a specific letter to fit into an assigned category. For example:

Category: Animals

Letter: b

Word List must consist of as many animal names that begin with b.

Letter: r

Word list must consist of as many animal names that begin with r.

Word lists are compared and points are earned for the “extra” words that no one else thought of.



I am sure that your family can think of many other word games to play, these are only a few examples of some of the ways that your child can have fun with words.

Make the Most of Your Parent/Teacher Conference

PARENT TEACHER CONFERENCES

The purpose of the parent/teacher conference time is to improve student achievement. Teachers and parents can’t accomplish this goal alone. Through collaboration and communication, parents and teachers can make a difference in providing the best education possible for all children.



How can the P/T Conference time be most effective for student achievement?

Here are some guidelines for talking with your child’s teacher about his/her progress.



1. Schedule a time that you can talk with your child’s teacher. Select a time that you will not be rushed. You will want to be free to talk honestly with the teacher. During the conference, the teacher will share strengths and weaknesses in all subject areas, assessment data, and student behavior.



2. Be prepared to ask specific questions concerning your child’s progress. For example:

• How much time should my child spend on reading and math each evening?

• How much time should he be spending on homework?

• What can I do to help my child with spelling (or any subject of concern)?

• Should I be teaching my child how to write in cursive?

• What can I do to get my child to go to bed early? (or wake up on time to catch the bus)?



3. Be prepared to share information about your child’s behaviors at home that may affect his progress at school. Your child’s teacher needs to know about eating and sleeping habits that may affect your child’s attention in school. If there are family issues that impact your child’s progress, feel free to share these with the teacher.



4. Let the teacher know about any concerns you may have about your child. If your child is coming home from school with concerns about the school day, share these with the teacher. She will address these concerns professionally.



5. Ask the teacher for examples of how you can help your child at home. For example:

• Show me how to do the math problems.

• Show me how to help my child on spelling, handwriting, or reading.



When you attend parent/teacher conferences, you are showing your child that you, not only value the importance of a good education, but also care about his/her work ethics in the classroom. The time spent in parent/teacher conferences can lay the foundation for building a strong working relationship between the home and school.

"Parenting/Relationships" by Jim Rohn

 Jim Rohn shares his expertise on leadership and parenting...

One person caring about another represents life's greatest value.

Your family and your love must be cultivated like a garden. Time, effort, and imagination must be summoned constantly to keep any relationship flourishing and growing.

The greatest gift you can give to somebody is your own personal development. I used to say, "If you will take care of me, I will take care of you." Now I say, "I will take care of me for you if you will take care of you for me"

The walls we build around us to keep out the sadness also keep out the joy.

There is no greater leadership challenge than parenting.

If you talk to your children, you can help them to keep their lives together. If you talk to them skillfully, you can help them to build future dreams.

Leadership is the great challenge of the 21st century in science, politics, education, and industry. But the greatest challenge in leadership is parenting. We need to do more than just get our enterprises ready for the challenges of the twenty-first century. We also need to get our children ready for the challenges of the 21st century.