How to Gain Administrative Supprt for your Fine Arts Program

Fine Arts Teachers are in a precarious position.  Every year as contracts come out, FA teachers worry about if their contract will be renewed. It is a sad state of affairs when budget cuts at the school often mean cutting the Fine Arts Department. Sometimes these cuts come in form of a non-renewal but more often these cuts come from the FA budget being decimated. As a Fine Arts teacher, you must advocate for your program and ensure that your students have the program and supplies they need to succeed. This is often a difficult task. To help make this task easier you must gain the support of your administration. A supportive administration will do wonders to help your children succeed. I have a wonderful working relationship with my administrators that I have worked very hard to create. Now this doesn't mean that we always agree or that I get an unlimited budget (oh man do I not get an unlimited budget) but it does mean that I have a working dialog with my administrators that helps make my job easier. Read on to see what I did to gain support.

Fundraising

It is the sad truth that money makes the world go round. Schools that are strapped for cash will often cut the fine arts programs first. This is especially true if your program is constantly needing money and never contributing to the general fund. Your department needs to become financially independent. If you are constantly going to your administration for money they are going to start thinking that you aren't adding value to the school. Your first goal is to simply raise enough money to run your own program. You should be able to cover your supplies, travel expenses and rights to performances. Check out my five creative fundraiser ideas if you need ideas on raising money. After you are able to raise enough money to maintain your own expenses you then need to start making a. "Profit" for the school. We contribute to our school through out major musical. This year we produced Aladdin jr. We made several thousand dollars for the school! If you are making money for the school, the principal will not want to cut your program!

Community performance

With the new leadership evaluation system that most principals are on, community outreach plays a large in the principals overall score. Going and doing community outreach is great for you and your principals' evaluation scores but it is also great for the students. Kids learn so much when they go and perform in their community. They learn how to adjust to different performance venues. They learn the importance of preparation and also being able to adjust on the fly. Most importantly, student learn about giving back to the community. I will never forget when out students went and sang for a nursing home. They came back talking about how happy the people were that we came and visited. They wanted to go back and see them again!

Be flexible but firm

As we all know in schools, things happen. You can't always avoid the last minute things that pop up throughout the school year. Being flexible with your administration can come in very handy. Principal asks you to put together a performance for a principals meeting "sure I would love to" is a great response. I once knew a theatre teacher who refused to be flexible ever. Her administration had accidentally scheduled the Winter Showcase over one of her early blocking rehearsals (meaning she had several months to make this rehearsal up). She refused to cancel/reschedule her rehearsal and threatened to not excuse students who wanted to perform in the showcase. This caused a lot of animosity between her and administration. Administration still made her cancel her rehearsal and both her and the principal were upset over the exchange. All of this could have been avoided with a little flexibility. If it all possible be flexible when your principal asks for something. If it is reasonable and you can reasonably accommodate them, always say yes.

Not only will flexibility help you create good will with your administration, it will also help you have good standing with your Principal when you need to say NO. My principal and I have a very good working relationship and she trusts me. She knows I will not say No to her unless I have a very good reason. Once we had a disagreement about how many students to put in a dance class. She wanted to let every student who had a desire to take dance on a grade level, take dance. I disagreed. I wanted to cap the class so that the teacher would not be overwhelmed (45 first graders in one classroom is just too many). She and I had a discussion, but I was firm. She could not put that many students in the class. It would hurt the program and that teacher's performances. She finally agreed and we were able to move on. I firmly believe that you need to be firm in your beliefs on what is best for the children. Say yes when you can, but when you feel like you must say no, do so firmly and have very good reasons ("I don't want to" is often not a great reason).

Get parent support

Parents can be your most valuable asset when it comes to gaining support from your administration. Keep your parents happy, and you will keep your administration happy.  Parents love to see their students perform and succeed. They love the opportunities you provide their child. Lets be honest, very core teachers have students performing and competing as much as Fine Arts Teachers do. Use this to your advantage. Give students the opportunity to perform. It always amazes me that no matter how many performance opportunities we give our students to perform (4+ a year), parents still want more. Parents will love you and it will create good good will with your administration.

Parents can also be your biggest support if your position is ever cut. I know of so many stories of Fine Arts teachers being re-instated at schools because parents went to the school board and complained. Parents hate it when the Arts get cut from a school. They really hate it when a fabulous arts teacher gets cut from a school. Sometimes going to the school board often enough will actually help save your job. Keeping parents happy is well worth the effort.

Put on awesome performances

The most important way to gain support is to put on quality performances. Do not throw a performance together at the last minute. Do not put on a performance that you are not proud of. Yes there is always more you can do to  improve your shows, but you need to first put in the effort. Choose quality material that is appropriately challenging. Encourage the students to go beyond their limits and then throw in a small amount of flash. Students love to perform. This is why you became a Fine Arts teacher in the first place. To teach students to love the arts and performance. Enjoy the process and do what you do best. For more tips on how to direct an awesome performance visit my Director's Corner. 

How do you gain support for your administration? Did I leave off any ideas? Do you think it is important to have support of your administration? What do you do if you don't have the support you need? 

Five fantastic fundraising ideas

Everyone has to do it. No one particularly likes to do it, but everyone has to do it... FUNDRAISING. Fundraising can be one of the hardest parts of any school job, especially a theatre teacher who is needing money to fund the next school production or competition. As a theatre teacher, my biggest fundraiser each year is my Musical Production.

This year I set a new high by raising $10,000 with my production! Say what!

If you read my posts on Thursday you know I am doing a weekly step by step guide to how to put on a productions. Productions are not easy and they require a ton of prep-work and expense. So while I love using a production as a fundraiser, it is often good to have a few easy fundraisers as well. These are also great because they work well for the entire school or a club (we have actually used these to help raise money for Relay for Life and other charities as well). These  fundraisers also take very little prep time and expense.

Penny wars

This is one of my favorite fundraisers. All you need are some teams and a big jar per team. In school, teams are easy. You can either have grade levels compete against each other, boys vs. girls or club vs. club.  What ever works. You then need to have large jars somewhere. (We were a little worried about the jars running off so we drilled milk-jugs to a large wooden plank and placed the plan in the library_ much harder to run off with a huge plank).  The rules are simple.  For every penny that is put in your team jar, your team gets a point. For every denomination that is not a penny, your team looses that many points. The team with the most points wins!

For example if we are having a boys vs girls penny war. One girl  puts 50 pennies in the girl jar. The girls now have 50 points! Then a boy comes and trows a quarter in the girl jar. The girls now loose 25 points (quarter= 25 pennies). The girls now only have 25 points!

This is a great game because kids get the change to sabotage the other teams. It also is great because it helps reinforce money concepts which our students struggle with. This game can be played for any amount of time you want. I once knew a school that played all year, but declared a winner each month! For the winning team you can choose any number of prizes: Free dance party during specials, pride, a sign over their hallway declaring them the winners. Try to think of something cheep but fun that the kids would love.

Flock of flamingos

 Flock of flamingos is a great fundraiser but you must have a very awesome staff and administration to pull it off. The whole concept is that students can pay money to send a flock of flamingos to different teacher's rooms. This fundraiser is hilarious but if your staff is not amused with the flock it wont work. To prepare for this fundraiser all you need to do is cut out a ton of flamingos from pink paper.  Or if you staff is really awesome_ go buy a few plastic flamingos at the dollar store/ goodwill. I would pick one week that was "Flamingo Week" during this week students can pay (see suggested prices below) to flamingo someone's classroom/class door. Teachers then either have to live with the flamingos all week or can get flamingo insurance to have the flamingos removed from their door at the end of each day.  Once the week is over, all the flamingos fly on and life returns to normal.

Suggested pricing:
1 flamingo is $1.00
1/2 flock (6 flamingos) is $5.00
Full Flock (12 flamingos) is $10.00
Flamingo insurance is $10.00

If you are using the plastic flamingos you might want to change the number of flamingos in a flock. If you are using paper you could increase the flock size. Also remember that if you want, more than one flock can go to a teacher's door (and even if they buy the insurance, the flock will still land for one day).

Jar of shame

You also need an awesome staff to pull off this fundraiser. Find a few awesome teachers who don't mind embarrassing themselves for a great cause. Have them each declare one embarrassing thing they will do if they win (or loose depending on how you look at it). Use the same jars as from the penny wars. Take pictures of each teacher are put a picture and their embarrassing stunt of the jar. The teacher who has raised the most money by the end of the week, must perform the embarrassing task. Everyone loves this fundraiser, it is fun and the kids get a kick out of watching teachers humiliate themselves. The only warning I would give is make sure the teachers are comfortable performing their tasks. You don't want someone to pack out at the last minuet.

Shameful ideas :)
dye you hair a funny color for the day
shave your head
eat a bug/worm
kiss a pig
get duck-taped to a wall
dress like a _______(something silly)____ all day
eat some weird food
do a crazy dance

Pay to wear

If your school has a strict uniform this is always a great option. On special days, allow students to pay money to break uniform. This fundraiser is great because it takes no effort on your part and you make some super easy money. We have had hat day, pajama day, sports day, silly day, book character day.  Any type of day you can think of is a great theme for this type of fundraiser. Make sure you get permission from your administration before hosting this event (some school systems wont let you pay to wear). Also make sure you have a plan for those kids who wear but do not pay. Do they have to call home and get a change of clothes or are you just going to ignore it. This fundraiser is no prep and no cost so if you are allowed you should definitely add it in to your rotation.

Face painting/ temporary tattoos

This fundraiser costs a little more on the front end, but all the kids love it. First invest in some face paints or temporary tattoos that you can sell.  Then on any day you get approval, sell face paint and temporary tattoos. You can make a ton of profit from this type of fundraiser. There 144 tattoos in a pack @ $5.00 a pack. If you sell the pack for even $0.25 each you will make $31.00 a pack (you can make $62 if you sell at $0.50 a tattoo). This is a great easy fundraiser for a club. You really need several people helping you sell/paint faces. If you have a ton of talented kids in your group let them paint faces one day. It is amazing how much money you can make for such a simply process.



Well these are just a few of my ideas on how to help raise money for your school, club, or class. Did any of these ideas work for you? Were you able to make any money off of them? Also what other fundraisers have you tried that have been very successful? Leave me a message I would love to hear from you!

Parent Communication when you have 500 Kids.

For those of you who don't know I teach over 500. Each one of those students has a parent who desperately wants communication. It can sometimes feel like all you do is communicate with parents. If you let it, it can become very overwhelming to deal with all of the parent communication. The parents of my students are awesome and(but) very involved in their children's lives. I have found for them, the more mass communication you have the easier it is to deal with the one on one communication that also comes up. For any type of communication you do, I highly recommend you keep a record. This is not only great for your observations (it's a TKES standard in my state) it also helps when parents say they did not know about an event (being able to pull up the dates of the mass communication really helps).

Mass Communication

There are three basic forms of mass communication I use and then several secondary forms for the really important communications.

Letters home

Obviously the easiest form of mass communication is paper letters home. I keep hoping that we will soon be able to move beyond paper copies home but it is a very slow process. I have found that often the letters never make it home or they get lost in the shuffle. Parents get so many pieces of paper home that often what I send never makes it to the parents attention even if it makes it into their house. Still while this is not the most effective form of communication, when there is a dispute about what is going on parents like to see a copy "what was sent home." I recommend having one day a week when parents know that important information is coming home. That way they know that they need to pay more close attention to papers that day. For us that day is Monday. I also recommend putting any information on colored paper (the brighter the better) you want anything that will help catch parent's eye or stand out in a sea of white notebook paper. If you don't already do this I would highly recommend starting a weekly/monthly newsletter. This will be something that parents come to expect and will look to for information about what is going on in school. This is especially great Fine Arts classes who often have performances and community events coming up every month. Being able to communicate dates to parents easily is very important.

Call Out

If your school is like mine you have a way to send mass phone calls to all students. We have started a thing called Tune in Tuesdays. Every Tuesday we do a mass call out with all of this week's announcements. This is great because it lets parents know what day and time to tune in so that they can know quickly what is going on in the school. I usually just submit the same letter I sent home to be read on those days. Make sure you keep a record of any time you utilize this service since there will be no obvious record of this type of communication.

Mass Text / Email: Remind.com 

Stop whatever you are doing right now and sign up for Remind.com if you are not already using this service you have no idea what you are missing. This is the best parent communication service ever! I love this app. Remind provides a fake number for parents to text to sign up to receive text messages or emails for you. This means that you get to keep your personal cell phone number safe but still have the ease to use modern communication. I have also found that parents are much more likely to read a text message or email. Remind is also great because you can attach a digital copy of the letter you sent home. This allows parents to have a copy of the letter on their phone when they need to refer to dates and such. Seriously this is quickly becoming my favorite form of communication. Please sign up and try it too. You will love it!

Labels/ Stickers

Desperate times call for desperate measures. For awhile we were having a horrible time with our mass communication. Students just were not taking the letters home, we had not discovered the wonderful Remind.com yet and parents were getting tired of listening to our Tune in Tuesdays. To ensure that parents knew very important information (upcoming performance date, time, and attire) we would use shipping labels to create stickers for the students. This worked so well for our younger students. Parents could simply read the sticker stuck to the shirt to get the information they needed. The stickers were a hit or miss with the older kids. I honestly had one student ask me for information that was literally stuck to his chest one day_ He hadn't bother to read the sticker that was stuck to him. If you need to get information home quickly though labels might be the way to go. We use the Avery 2inch X 4 inch labels and can fit a ton of information in a small space. You can also customize each label to a particular student using mail merge. I will have more information on how to do this in a later post.

Website

This is one form of communication that I wish I used more. I have this very cute website set up. It tells parents the standards I teach and a quick summary of all my lessons, there are a few cute photos. On the whole though I very rarely touch my website. I know I should use it more, I know it would be very effective but I just haven't. If you have any tips on how to use a website, I would love to hear it!

Marquee

We have a small marquee outside the school to advertise events. I use this to advertise performance, awards nights, and deadlines. This is very helpful since we have a ton of parents who come out and sit in the car lane.

County website and tv channel

Once again these are usually only used to advertise dates. This is especially great for our big productions.

Google Drive

These are just a few of the ideas that I have used. I just read an article here about a teacher who uses Google Drive for parent communication. She had some wonderful ideas! I personally have only used Google Forms to conduct parent surveys and online applications (I teach at a magnet school that is open to all students in the community, not just those zoned for the area). I have loved using forms, and this article has really inspired me to try using more of Google Drive next year!

How do you communicate with the masses, is there anything on here that I left off?