Ideas You Can Use: Activities in the Middle

Sample Issue

Top 10 Things to Do to Get Ready for School
August, 2007

By Sue Dowty

With a new school year already looming on the horizon—where does the summer go?—here are a few tips for getting ready that will get your year off to a smooth start.

10. Stock your supply closet. Do this before the staff and students come back to ensure you get what you know you need. As for me, I have the following items on my shopping list:

• Blue painter's tape (for posters)
• Zip-lock baggies in sandwich and gallon sizes (used for tons of stuff!)
  
• Ink and photo paper for our digital camera printer (for welcome back bulletin board pictures)
  
• Jolly Rancher candies (for rewards)
  
• Popcorn and juice boxes (snacks for future work parties)
  
• Paper towels (as the school's towels never absorb much!).

9. Check school calendar. I’ll bet you turned in dates for the next school year's events before you left school in June, but now before school starts is the time to double check them and see if there are any conflicts with the school master calendar. You could have requested a party on the day of parent conferences!

8. Confirm dates for off-campus events. Again, these dates probably were set up before the end of school, but double check dates on contracts against dates within your building. Also, sometimes the venders may have written down the wrong date on your contract.

7. Share dates. Once all your dates are confirmed and fit with the school master calendar, make up a master list of your events. Share this with staff members so they can know what is coming up. Share it with your officers, too. You can create a "bookmark of your organization's dates" that can go inside daily planners to help everyone remember what is coming up.

6. Yearlong permission slip for officers. You might want to create a permission to leave campus form (or use a school form) for your officers that they have their parents sign at the start of the year for you to keep on file. When they need to leave (with an adult driver) during second period to get an item needed for a lunchtime activity, they will have the parental okay to do so.

5. Each one teach one. Plan and conduct an officer's retreat where you go over all the basic routines of your organization. These routines include but are not limited to: how to get refunded for a purchases: planning sheets that need to be done; how to request items for custodial staff; how to write a thank you; how to get donations. Once the officers know the steps, they take on one of the routines and plan a 10–15 minute training on that topic. Then when you have your retreat for all members, have each officer train a small number of members in a "round table" format.

4. Staff welcome. Take the time to make a good impression on your staff by having a special treat waiting for them in their mailboxes. It could be a fancy "survival kit" made by your officers that could include cough drops, small Kleenex packets, needle and thread, and aspirins all in a Zip-lock baggie, or something as small as a box of Kleenex. Consider also hosting a welcome back coffee that first morning before meetings start and a "help you set up your room" work party where students come in and teachers get help with bulletin boards, book counting, and other room set-up chores.

3. Picture board of members. Take current pictures of the officers of your organization and post them up where students can see them. If you have representatives for grades or halls, be sure to post those rep pictures close by the classes of the students they represent.

2. Current phone list. Your students can make a phone tree for when you need to get information out—but double check the phone numbers. Also, consider posting both landline numbers and cell phone numbers or ask your students what number is the one you should post. Then be sure you have a copy of this at your desk and at home!

1. Advisor's notebook. This may take you a while to set up but will save you time all year. Print off copies of schedules for all your officers and put them in a schedule section of your notebook. Add the phone list to another section. Officer behavior agreements go in another, as does your master list of dates. Put a copy of your budget and last activity fund accounting sheet from the office along with copies of check request forms in a section marked money. You might want to also put a copy of your school handbook in the notebook. Consider those forms you use often and add copies of them to a section titled forms. Keep this notebook close at hand all year and add sections to it when you find other topics you use often.

Sue Dowty serves as Action Council advisor at Conestoga MS in Beaverton, OR, and is a former member of the National Association of Student Councils' Executive Board.