Presentation and Recruitment Tips

Reaching All Parents
Reaching out to the broadest cross-section of parents should be your goal, in order to ensure the most effective education program with the greatest benefits for your school community. The busy lives of parents, language and cultural barriers, parents' personal feelings about school-these are all very real factors and need to be kept in mind as you plan your programs.

The materials in this toolkit have been designed, both in format and content, to appeal to a wide range of parents and other caregivers. We have attempted to keep the content of workshops and hand-outs relevant and interesting, while keeping the language in written materials accessible. In our initial field tests, conducted in a wide diversity of situations, most of the feedback revealed that participants did not find the materials too academic or formal. In cases where these issues were raised, we have made revisions to increase accessibility but maintain accuracy.

Recruitment Strategies
The ways that you use these materials can further affect how successful they are. There is no one winning formula for reaching a broad cross-section of parents-every school community is different. Capitalize on what is already known about successful strategies for your particular community, and build on that knowledge to come up with new ways that work.

• Location matters. In some communities, the school site is a good site. In other communities, holding sessions at other community sites, such as at the location of afterschool care programs or at a church, is more productive. Most parents we polled felt fine about coming to school, but were not interested in having the session be part of the PTA structure, as this structure can have the feel of an exclusive group. If you don't already know the best ways to attract people to events in your school community, you might want to find out the most appealing location by conducting a written or phone survey.
• Use Existing Networks. Using phone trees so the word can be spread from parent to parent can be a very effective recruitment strategy. Parents can offer to give each other rides as appropriate. Relying on existing social structure is a powerful way to stimulate attendance, such as asking each parent who came to the first workshop to recruit one other parent to attend the second workshop with them. Personal invitations by teachers can also be effective.
• Use Incentives. Providing transportation, food, and childcare are all things that may be important to ensuring broad attendance. We know of a school that uses door prizes and raffles at parent meetings. Other sites have had teachers or parents offer science and math activities for children in one room while their parents participate in these parent education sessions in another. The sites who did this had record turn-outs!