Yes, this school year I volunteered to be the room parent for N’s class. No , not self volunteered rather the role fell into my laps and just couldn’t say no.

I have only been volunteering for class/school specific activities, up until now. However, this year I moved on from following the instructions to giving out the instructions to a room full of parents (Parents can be a scary lot I tell you😂).

A Room Parent’s primary duties are to promote classroom support by organizing volunteers at teacher request and to build community through family engagement through activities. The activities include social events and outings, classroom parties, gala projects, gardening, classroom upkeep, field trips, reading parents, and general classroom assistance.

My personality may come across as bit of an extrovert to many who know me. I do find myself at ease when striking a conversation with a complete stranger, or speaking up in a room full of people, basically I enjoy socializing. But being the communication bridge between the teacher and other parents is whole other ball game.

It requires you to bring every bit of your exuberant personality along with patience and a dash of humility! Let’s not forget the important bit, absolute maddening love for your child lest why else would you sign up for all the unpaid l

Why me?

It was last year’s Holi celebrations in N‘s class that did me in ! I must have sent more than one email happily volunteering myself for all class activities for everything holi and otherwise. How I wish I had just shut up and kept quite😜.

I dug the hole for myself and here I am (oh! were looking for aww-being a room parent-is-so-much-fun kind of post, well sorry to disappoint you! 😂). I will get to that part too, way later in the post 😜.

When the school opened for the new school year 2021-2022, the Director Of Development at school reached out to me, requesting me to take up the role of the room parent for this year. The director must have sensed my hesitation, as she continued “It was N’s class teacher who suggested your name, she sees you as good fit for this role”

Now, how could I say NO to that? I mean I could, but I didn’t duh !! And thus began my days of being a room parent. I no longer miss the planning/scheduling/organizing days from my days at work! Some days I have my hands full just coordinating and writing emails .

I say requesting, because the schools are well aware of the kind of commitment, time and energy you would have to give when you sign up for the role.

They know that being a room parent or part of any volunteering committee such as PTA (Parent Teacher Associations) or family alliances (run by parents) is a whole lot of work than visible to naked eyes.

Of course, when you sign up to take this role , you convince yourself by repeating “It’s all for kids, all for that smile” 🤪.

What’s a Room Parent?

In USA, a room parent is a parent who helps the teacher of a class in their child’s school, and helps communicate between other parents and the teacher, the school parent group and occasionally school administration and any other groups such as the family alliance.

This broadly defines the work the room parent must do apart from their regular day to day life/work commitments. If you go online you will tons of links and checklists on duties of a room parent. There is gamut of information available as blog posts, checklists for being a successful room parent 😛.

Boy it can be both an exhilarating and exhausting experience depending on how you feel about being the “Room Parent”.

First week as room parent

Luckily for me, I had the room parent rule book provided by the school to help clear my doubts. I also got plenty of help from the room parent coordinators .

1. First I reached out to the class teacher to understand her needs, expectations and any year around class volunteer opportunities.
2. Next I created a volunteer sign up for items requested by teacher, ensuring it matched with school calendar.
3. Finally I sent out an email to the parents introducing myself, welcoming the new families, and listing expectations from parents. Also informing them of other emails that would soon follow this one . It was a rather lengthy verbose email! (Thanking the parents for being patient at the end of it).
4. The first email was followed by email requests for volunteer signups and informal play dates (given the Covid restrictions, the parents didn’t have school scheduled social meetings unlike previous school years. )

The second week was about answering any queries, sending gentle reminders for volunteering opportunities and organizing the informal play date.

To my surprise, I successfully managed to have one informal playdate in the school premises in first few weeks itself . We were the only class to actually have the playdate 😂.

Gentle Reminders and more

All parents including husband and I want to help out and give time to the school. Specially in our new school, where the handbook clearly states that each family should spend a certain hours volunteering. Being a non profit organization, we are in fact even requested to log in the hours (for legal and financial reasons).

All parents start the new year promising themselves to be more involved with their kids classes. Soon work/life commitments take over and volunteering just doesn’t seem to fit in to our schedules anymore. Last two years because of Covid, the school has been easy on number of volunteering hours per family.

Bar a few exceptions most parents need reminders for signing up for the smallest volunteering opportunity. The easy ones go first, it’s the ones which require staying back, coming early or setting up that need a little bit of gentle nudging.

Reminders are a charm, with one or two gentle reminders most parents do the needful. In the reminders, I never forget to thank them for taking time out for the children. It always does the trick for getting quicker sign ups🙂 .

As a room parent, once the reminders go out you just have to be patient. Most of the times,it all fills and sometimes they don’t.

Don’t judge any parent (agreed it is hard to practice that, but practice one must ), you don’t know where there are coming from. The scenes from their work or life is unknown to you. Give them space, at the end of the day, you are asking a parent to take time off their busy schedule to help out and sometimes they just can not.

Emails

The amount of time I have spent in writing emails as a room parent since last September, I should have just gone back to work, at least I’ll would get paid for it🤪😂.

In all of my 11 years of work experience I would have probably spent lesser time in writing a critical customer email than the I take in writing an email requesting donation to the parents (of course I exaggerated a bit here, but you get my point!)

Trust me it is easier in a professional setup where there are a set of predefined rules and guidelines in place. You are communicating with colleagues -people you see (over zoom – today’s reality), speak on the phone, attend meetings with, and occasionally meet for happy hours. There is that professional connect with them that makes the communication easier.

Prior to Covid, there were social evenings, a time for the parents to get to know each other. However after Covid, these opportunities are few and in between. So basically you know each other through the email exchanges.

Email is now the new “social evening” the written communication that can make or break the virtual bond. How you play with the words can either make your life as a room parent easier or whole lot harder!

Donations

In your email sent to the parents you don’t want to come across as demanding, impoliet, impatient. You are representing the teacher. Your words should excite the parents to be involved in the class. Encourage them to sign up for those volunteering opportunities.

The hardest part is asking for donations. Here you have to proceed with caution. What may seem an easy ask for you, may be a burden for others. Donations should always be optional. Explain the intent clearly, why should they consider giving and how it may help. The tone of your mail makes all the difference.

Like after Christmas break, when most parents express their gratitude through gifts, and teacher appreciation weeks where teachers see more gifts coming their way asking the parents for more donations, like birthday celebrations or class parties can be challenging! Haha did I scare you now? To play this role to your best ability you need to have a streak of compassion.

What prompted me to write?

I choose to write about this topic because for past two weeks I have been sending umpteen emails , spending time planning and organizing for N‘s class and assistant teacher’s birthdays whose birthdays are just 10 days apart. Double whammy. But guess what ? After all the gentle reminders, as a class we collected much more than I anticipated for their gifts, and the virtual card is finally all done and ready to be delivered to the teacher tomorrow. Oh it’s so darn cute, if only I could share it with you guys!

After this role, I am considering offering my services on how to be an efficient Room parent!! Any takers? 😂

Finally the Fun

I did make Room Parent sound like all work no play no fun , but hey it is a lot of fun and rewarding at the end of the day after all that hard work!

1. One you have a private access to the teacher. You know things about the class before any other parent.

2. Second , your kid is proudly flaunting your status as the room parent to their friends. (I already have request from V to be her class room parent 😂🤷‍♀️)

3. You build connections with the school administration. They know you by your first name and not by your child’s name🤪. Connections matter.

4. You hone your soft skills of persuasion , empathy, kindness, patience, problem solving in real world. Come on the employers dig this skill. You can add it to your resume!

5. Then there is your email writing skills and etiquette. You get better at it as you spend more time writing the emails. Written english is one of the must have skills in most jobs.

6. Organizing, planning and scheduling is another skill set you get better if not already.

7. Lastly and most importantly , you are doing it for your child! What can be more rewarding than this!!

Then there is class parties, craft and art and other loads of fun activities and events you end up organizing with other parents.Plus you can add it on your resume as one of the volunteer experiences!

You know what I might as well use this in my resume now 😂!. Before I started on this post I actually didn’t see all these benefits. That’s the magic with words, they are lens to your inner feelings, capturing every thought and emotion, catching you unaware.

That’s it from me! Have a fun week , see you soon with another post. Adios.

Those who can do, do. Those who can do more, volunteer– Unknown.