The Parent Class Representative (hereafter referred to as class rep) provides an important line of communication between the classroom teacher and parents.
Time Commitment
Class reps do not have to carry the entire load. Their role is to encourage all parents to get involved.
How it Works
At the start of each school year, the classroom teacher will ask for a parent to nominate as the class rep for the year. Note this can be shared between two people. As a means of communicating with parents, the school will provide class reps with a list of parent’s emails at the start of the year. This is so the school can ensure parent permission has been obtained prior to sharing contact details. When new parents arrive or existing parents leave the school, the school’s administration staff will inform you of any changes.
Role of the Parent Class Representative:
- Forward information from the teacher to parents via email or notices posted on the classroom window (with the class teacher’s permission).
- Assist the teacher in sourcing helpers for activities/excursions, if required.
- Support parents, particularly new ones, by providing advice on where to go or who to ask for information when required.
- Encourage parents to get involved with school and P&C activities in some way, however small, throughout the year.
Guidelines for Email Communications
Please note that all group email communications particularly between class reps and the parents on the class contact list must be as follows:
- The email must be sent ‘TO’ yourself (your email address)
- The parents’ contact email addresses must be put in the ‘BCC’ section (ie: “blind CC”).
This is to help maintain parents’ privacy, and ensure that parents on the contact list do not receive any emails other than those supported by the school. Also, if any parents ‘reply’ to you, the only person that will receive the reply is you.
As parents often receive many communications from the school, please keep your emails succinct but friendly and positive in tone. Please keep group emails within your class for information dissemination only and do not allow them to become a forum for debate.
Or alternatively, some parent representatives have used the Whatsapp effectively for communication.
P&C Meetings
All parents are welcome to and encouraged to attend P&C Meetings, however, as a class rep, there is no commitment to do so.
Extra things you can do:
- Have regular informal chats with the teacher to show continued support.
- Pass on to the P&C if parents have fundraising ideas and suggestions as to how funds should be spent.
- Keep your ear to the ground and mention to the teacher anything “moving” in the parent body that teachers might wish to know about; both positive and negative. This is an attempt to pre-empt thoughts before they become issues.
- Help the parents within their class or year to network which is particularly important when new families start at the school. If parents within your class agree, the contact list can be shared to enable this to happen. Assessing whether this is wanted is up to the individual rep and their own class parent group.
- Plan social activities, e.g. coffee mornings, dinners, play dates after school, on weekends or during the holidays.
- Collect contributions and organise a group “end of year thank you” gift for the classroom teacher (optional).