• Curriculum Overview
• Afternoons
• Events and Celebrations
• Service Learning and Partnerships
• Special Assemblies
• Mini Courses

We are fortunate as a community to have a wonderful group of classroom parents this year.

Classroom parents forge a link between the teacher and the parents in a class, strengthening the classroom and helping to blend together life at school and life at home. Jona Harvey, PCO Co-Chair and Class Parent 'Manager,' has worked tirelessly over the past two years to try to create a network in which classroom parents can feel supported, have clarity about their roles, and make the volunteer time they give to SRV feel worthwhile. Jona believes that the class parent system is ". . .a microcosm of the big picture at SRV. The more class parents are involved, the easier it will be for ALL parents to be involved in the daily lives of their children at school." This year the class parent network, or those close to it, bring some interesting, and hopefully successful, initiatives. The first is a new structure around events planning and volunteer coordination. As in most schools, each class group is now assigned to their 'own' all-community event (see more information on page 20 of the Parent Handbook & Directory.). This means for example, that Primary Circle parents, with help from their class parents, will help to make sure that our first Putter Day goes off without a hitch. Experience in helping to coordinate one event per year will hopefully give parents a specific place for their volunteer energy. Of course, all parents are always welcome to plug in to all events, but for those who need help figuring out where or how to plug in, this will hopefully help. Because of our vertical groupings in 1st and 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and 5th and 6th, parents in their second year will help parents in their first year of a group to know what the event entails and will have the experience of doing it the year before. In addition, it will give parents the opportunity to work on many school events throughout the course of their time at SRV, hopefully avoiding 'burnout' or the same parents having to do the same work every year (again, unless they want to). All of this will, in turn, build community in classroom groups and beyond.

This year, class parents are especially sensitive to the challenges of full-time working parents who do not have the kind of job flexibility needed to be able to participate in many school activities, like early-morning meetings or quickly organized, spur-of-the-moment field trips. Cathryn Campbell, mother of Jordan (OG) and Ethan (Sara's class), is especially interested in exploring ways to be more inclusive of working parents and is open to working with others who are interested in this topic. Another new focus this year is to support the group of specials teachers (Mike, Jodie, Kate, Annie, Dawn, Anu, and Robin as Service and Partnership Learning Coordinator) through the installation of their own 'class' parents, Roger and Jessica Sealy.

We hope these new initiatives, combined with a strong class parent system, will further encourage and incorporate parent involvement in The School in Rose Valley community.