Describe the conversation with your administration about health. moves. minds.? Which talking points seemed to resonate best with your admin?
There is a huge push towards social and emotional learning across all curriculum, so when admin hears those words, they tend to perk up a bit. We discussed how it will impact students mental health, as well as the benefits the program has with raising money for the program and for our school.
How did you introduce the fundraiser to your students and parents? What was their reaction?
I let parents know that we will be learning about and practicing strategies to help with our own social and emotional learning during PE. Students being able to recognize situations where they may need support and just understanding their own emotions is key. Some parents become very interested, as social & emotional issues are something they’ve been working on at home, or even battling themselves as parents.
We want to learn from your success and how you got parents and students so engaged. Please attach the emails you sent to parents and any other documents you used to get everyone excited for your fundraising efforts.
Which events did you run throughout your fundraiser to encourage participation? Please explain your successful events in detail.
Last year, the big push to help raise awareness was to raise money to “Pie Mr. Ladd in the face.” The incentive was able to draw a lot of students into the program, even if they didn’t understand what exactly we were raising money for. But getting them interested is half the battle. Once students were interested, they were able to easily buy in on what I was teaching them and the impact was noteable.
What type of feedback did you hear from students and parents?
The most impactful feedback I received from a parent was our top earner. The students grandfather battled depression his entire life. She wanted to raise the most money so she could name the gym after him (the top earner gets the gym named after the student). So instead of choosing to name it after herself, she named our gym after her grandfather.
What is something you would consider doing differently next year?
I would continue to try and push to get classroom teachers more involved. They have so much going on in the classroom, I try to not give them extra to think about. But social & emotional learning will benefit them in the classroom as well.
In which ways did you incorporate kindness into your fundraising efforts?
We push empathy and understanding our own emotions is hard enough. We discuss that we don’t understand what others are feeling and going through and to always be kind towards others.
