At my school, Open House Night means the teachers stand outside their doors and greet students and parents as they come by to see where their classes are. We also help direct people to the right locations and assist with locker problems. There is no specific plan or order to where the students/parents go and we aren't expected to sit down with anyone and "talk shop." I think it would best be called a Meet and Greet night.
I came up with an idea for this year's Open House Night: I created magnets with my email, webpage, and directions for setting up Remind101. The magnets were made using simple print-your-own business cards.
I hot-glued little round magnets (which I found at Walmart) to the backs after printing and tearing out the cards.
I would upload a picture for you, but my information is on them. Sorry everyone!
They were a great little something to give the parents and students as I introduced myself. One parent said that he could tell I'd been teaching a while. I'm not sure if it was my confidence in introducing myself or the fact that I had created contact information cards. Most parents flew right past me and stuck their heads in my door. When I would go up to say hi, they would be startled and tell me they thought I was a student. Looking young is going to be great for me when I'm sixty!
So if you are looking for a great way to impress people at Open House Night, think about creating your own contact cards. They are super easy to make and are fairly cheap (100 business cards cost $13.00 and the magnets cost $5.36 for 50, so about $11 for 100). Less than $25 for 100 contact cards; I have about 100 students and not all of my students took a card, so I'll have some left over for next year.
At less than 25 cents per card, it's much cheaper than having someone else make them for you. They might look fancier, but the cards below, created by Purple Trail, cost .67 a piece!
Anyone else do something neat for Back to School or Open House Night?
Cool idea! I'm using Remind101 for the first time this year. I'd love to hear more about your experiences using it. Also, do you give out your regular number or a google voice account number?
ReplyDeleteI love Remind101. I've only had one problem with it so far: Last year I sent a message and it took three hours before it got sent out to my students. I'm not sure if there was a glitch in the system that time or what, because it has never happened again.
DeleteAs far as giving out my phone number, I don't. I know teachers who do, but in my district the potential for getting fired for something like that is pretty high. We really aren't allowed to for safety reasons. I give them my email and they also have the ability to send me messages through the webpage. Technically, they aren't supposed to send me anything through my webpage, but I keep all the messages to cover myself.