Communicating with parents

Automatically generated from the audio, so it may not be perfectly word-for-word.

Hi, welcome to the PTA Podcast. My name is Yvonne, and I've been a PTA volunteer for a few years now. But I'm just one of thousands of volunteers up and down the country who all want to make a difference to their schools. PTAs are becoming even more crucial in UK schools to boost budget, and I find it fascinating to talk to other volunteers about the different approaches they take. So please join me in this podcast to share information, generate ideas, debate issues, and celebrate success. And I hope that you can take something away for your PTA today. Hello and welcome to episode 24 of the PTA Podcast. How are you doing? For me, it's the first week back at school after the February half-term holidays, and I wondered if you had had a good half-term holiday. We didn't make many plans for our half-term, as I think myself and the children always need a break from rushing around during term time. So this holiday we really took it easy and just did a few local activities or some little day trips. But one thing we did which was really popular with my three boys was to hire a badminton court at our local leisure centre and play badminton for an hour. I would really encourage you to check out your local leisure centre because I didn't actually know we could do this, and it was only when we were sort of trying to think of someone we hadn't been in the local area and something to do just for a little bit of time when we really looked into it and saw that we could actually do it. It was so much fun and actually quite energetic. Now, my memories of Badminton are that the shuttlecock flies through the air at quite a leisurely pace, or that's how I've played it in the past, and I wasn't expecting it to be such great exercise, but it really was for a whole hour as well. So my eldest son r uh regularly plays at an after school club, so he could tell us all the proper rules, which I didn't know. My middle son and I were happy just to hit the shuttlecock to one another to have fun, like maybe count how many hits we could get in a row before one of us missed the shuttlecock or it hit the net or something. My youngest, who is uh who's just turned 10, um, he found it really hard, which I kind of anticipated because you know a badminton racket is quite a different shape to a tennis racket. It's got that really long, um sorry, I don't know the technical term, but a really long stem on it, which is very thin, isn't it? And then the rackets at the end, and again this the sort of surface area of the racket is also quite small. So I I mean I remember as a child finding it really tough to hit anything with a badminton racket, so I thought he might have uh a bit of trouble with that. Um but by the end of the session, so to start with, he had a lot of trouble with it, and in fact, was getting a bit demoralised after about five minutes of completely missing everything. So he just sat and watched for a bit, and then um my elder son who who goes to this badminton club decided to give him a hand. So they went into a a different area of the hall and he was just helping him to hit it, just hit it in any shape or form, just have contact with the shuttlecock. Um so he did a sort of one-to-one with his little brother and um uh and he and by the end of the hour um Patrick managed to come back to the court and we did some shots and hitting the shuttlecock over between the all four of us, and he managed to join in and return some shots and he felt a lot better after that. So it was a huge success, and uh we don't own any Bubington rackets ourselves, we hired them from the Leisure Centre. So uh yeah, I just wanted to mention it because um we have these things in our town centres or local towns, and uh perhaps we don't use them as much as we should, or perhaps we don't realise uh the facilities they have. So I I just thought I'd mention it. Um if you were ever stuck for something to do with your kids and or or or with your friends, um it was just so much fun, and so much fun because I think we hadn't done it for ages and ages, it was something completely different. It wasn't just going for another, as my kids would call it, another boring walk. It was um something that we could all join in, and I um the kids were just as good as me, the grown-up, you know. So yeah, it was great. Um I did ask my middle son what he had enjoyed about half-term at the weekend, and he said he just enjoyed relaxing and and not having to be somewhere and not having to fit loads of things in. So I think our approach of not rushing around worked particularly well for everybody this this half term. I know this half-term is also when some people go skiing, which is probably the opposite of not rushing around, but uh whatever you've done, I hope you've had a great week and have some PTA plans to come back to. A while ago I mentioned a new feature on my podcast, which was that you can send me a text if you click on the link in my episode notes. And about a week ago, I received my first text from a listener, which was really lovely. So I just wanted to give a shout out to Evie who sent me a text. Um, Evie, I received your text, thank you very much. But unfortunately, uh I didn't realise that that the feature of um sending me a text unfortunately means I can't reply to you directly. I can't text you or email you back. Um so I'm so sorry you've had no reply, and I really hope you're listening to this episode because I'm going to reply to you now because I couldn't do it any other way. So Evie sent me a lovely message to say that she was enjoying my podcast. Thanks, Evie, and said my recent episode 22 uh about me doing my chairs handover was particularly interesting as her PTA is going through the same thing or going to be going through it soon. And Evie, I just wanted to say I was really pleased to hear that you found that episode useful because I wasn't sure whether to put it out. I had thought maybe the topic um would be a little bit boring, um, and I wasn't sure how people would how useful people would find it really. So I really appreciated you saying that you found it useful and found it interesting. Thank you very much. Um Evie goes on to ask me about Instagram and whether my PTA uses it. So, Evie, thank you for the question. I'm not an Instagram user myself in my personal life, um, so I don't know how it differs to Facebook or whether there would be an advantage to using Instagram in addition to Facebook. I would definitely have a think about where you think parents would most likely go for information about your PTA already, and be mindful that uh whenever you put out information about PTA things that you'll need to do it multiple times. So it could be quite a job for someone to keep track of if you have multiple accounts. So if you already do Facebook and you already do something else, and then you're wanting to add in Instagram, I just think it might be something to consider whether you can really keep on top of it. Um on the other hand, could be a great opportunity to advertise for somebody to be a social media manager on your PTA. It's a great name position on your team, and you could even advertise it out to um all the parents at your school, and it might encourage somebody else to join your PTA if they knew that they were doing a particular role like that. So could be a really good opportunity to get another another volunteer on board. Um, I think whatever methods you use to communicate with parents, it needs to be consistent, accurate, and timely. And if you have volunteers who can really focus on getting your comms right, that will make a huge difference to all of your events and also how your PTA sort of sits within the school community. Obviously, we all want people to know that the school has a PTA, and so the more you talk about your PTA, the more your PTA appears in people's vision, um, the more they hear about it, um, the better the things uh the better your activities and events will be received, I think, by the parent community and by the children. So Evie's question really got me thinking actually about how my PTA communicates within my school community, and I thought it'd be interesting to share what we do, and I'd be really interested to hear if you do a similar thing, um, or indeed if you do anything different or anything in addition to what my PTA does. So please do let me know. If you email me on hello at PTApodcast.com, I can reply to you on email, um, or you can send me a text, which unfortunately I can't reply to, but I'll still receive your message. So um if any PTAs out there do use Instagram and find that it really works for them, I I would love to hear from you, and I'd definitely be able to mention that in my um next episode. Uh, so we can kind of get a feel, everyone can get a feel um for you know what the benefits would be for Instagram. As I say, I don't really understand the difference between Facebook and Instagram. I know that they're both owned by the same company. Um I was under the impression that Instagram was more about photos and pictures, but not being a user, I I can't really comment on that, sorry. So I think the first thing to note about communications is that we are living in an age of unbelievable amounts of information, which is being bombarded at us almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and I know that I can feel overwhelmed by that at times, and it can just get too much, and that's why I turn my phone on silence and leave it in the kitchen all day, and I don't look at it at all because I just need a break. And because there is so much information coming from all directions, it's all competing against itself for our attention all the time. So that's the first thing to bear in mind. The second thing to note is that you need to accept the fact that you need to communicate the same message to parents multiple times in order for them to take action. Um I think this is something every PTA up and down the country could agree on that no matter how many times you have emailed or messaged or posted about an event, you can guarantee that there will be at least one person who claims they've never heard of it before and make some sort of complaint about that. Um and uh yeah, we have definitely had that happen to us. Um I have experienced this myself, uh, but there was one day when it was really driven home to me. It was in a PTA meeting, unfortunately, with both of our headteachers, which made it a little bit embarrassing. Um, yeah, both of our headteachers were present and we were discussing or reviewing expenditure that we'd transferred to the school that year, something like that. And one of my team piped up to say that they had no idea we had paid for something or other in particular, which really surprised me because we had definitely had multiple discussions about it, and and I suddenly thought, gosh, if a member of my own PTA team doesn't know about this, we really need to be communicating much more. Um, so you can never assume that parents outside your PTA organisational team know what's going on, and you will always need to use multiple forms of communication with multiple messages, too, in order to try and get your activities and events seen and action by parents. It is a fact, and this means that communications can be a really big part of what a PTA has to do, it can be really time-consuming, um, and that is a really important point to bear in mind. And of course, communicating with your parent community is absolutely crucial. So, you do need, I think, a clear plan on how you do that. In fact, you could consider having a role on your PTA team, um, which I mentioned before, but which just focuses on doing the communications and putting your messages out there, as it can be so time consuming. Um, and again, it's a great opportunity to bring somebody else on board to have that nice um specific role. So, uh now I'm just going to talk about some of the of the communication methods that my PTA uses and the types of things that we do. So, everything I'm going to talk about, uh all these methods are all free and hopefully therefore accessible by every PTA. I'm sure that I'm going to be talking about things which you already do, but there might be some things that you might like to try. So let's just dive in. The first two methods on my list are, I think, the most important ones. And these are the methods that the school uses to contact parents, which can be email and also possibly a some sort of communications website, so something like Seesaw or ClassDojo or something like that. My school uses email, so I'm going to focus on that here as I don't know enough about the other methods, and I think there's quite a lot of other methods, so I'm just going to focus on email. So communications from the school are the most important as they are the only way to reach all of the parents in your school. You don't have to encourage people to follow a Facebook page, and even if you do, you can't guarantee that they all will. So if you want a guaranteed method to reach all parents, then using the method that your school uses is the way forward with that. So the way we actually do this in practice is that I email our school admin officer who's in the school office, and I ask her to send out the email at the bottom of my email. So I write the email I want her to send out. I want I write the email I want sent out to parents. And then at the top of the email, I just put a little note saying hi, please could you send out my email below to all parents? Thanks. Um, and so all she then has to do is cut and paste the email I've already written into a new email, possibly also include an attachment if if I if we've made a poster or a form or something like that, and she usually sends it out the same day or the next day, which is really helpful and super responsive, which is great, because sometimes uh I've um not done my planning and I have uh you know left it till the very last minute and it is suddenly then it's urgent, isn't it? So when I send my email to the school asking them to send the email out, I also copy in my head of school so that she knows what's going out and when. So everybody's kind of kept in the loop. Um so that method is really easy at my school. I know that this is not the same at every school. I have read some posts on the PTA Facebook forums which have described challenging relationships between um school offices and PTAs, and I'm really sorry to hear that things are like that for some PTAs because it it's so helpful for everybody if everybody can just work together. Um it's in an ideal world it's just so mutually beneficial for both parties to to be helpful to each other, um, but I know in reality this is not necessarily the case. I think if you're in that situation, um well, first of all, I really feel for you, and I can only suggest to keep trying to find a common ground and keep the communication channels open in the hope that things improve. So direct school emails are one way to reach all parents, and the other method I wanted to mention are the school newsletters. My school moved from weekly newsletters to terminally ones a few years ago, and they so they come out at the end of every term, and they're a summary of all the learning and the school activities that have taken place in that particular term. They also comment on the sporting activities and some of the extracurricular stuff as well. So it's like a whole catch-all of everything that's happened. And I um always wrote a paragraph or two for the newsletter about my PTA, summarising what we had done that term, how much we'd raised, and if we had the information about what we were planning for the next term for for the or for the future further ahead. So if your school has any form of newsletter, try and find a space in there for information about your PTA. My school is small enough that we have just one newsletter per term for the whole school, but I can imagine that perhaps a bigger school might have multiple newsletters, there might be a few options to go for. So perhaps your school has just a I don't know, PE newsletter or something that covers the whole school. You can still get information about your PTA in there, or if your school has a newsletter per year group, that is then seven newsletters that you could plunk your PTA paragraph into. Um, so try and work with the school to um carve out a bit of space for your PTA information, and don't forget to include your PTA logo next to your article in a newsletter so people can start to associate it with your PTA and then they understand what the logo means when they see it elsewhere. So do have that visual reminder if you have a separate logo for your PTA. Now, your school may have other things that they send out to all parents as well. So the best thing to do is to talk to your school and find out what you could be included on that reaches all parents at the school. So I would say that your school emails or school communications and your school newsletter are the main important communications that you need to hook on to. And we're going to move on to now other types of communication which you could use, but will not reach all the parents at your school. So obviously, the first thing to mention is social media. I've only really heard of schools using Instagram and Facebook, and as you know already, I don't have any experience with Instagram, so I'm only going to be able to talk about Facebook on here as it's something that we use for our PTA. When I became chair a few years ago, my PTA already had a Facebook page, so we inherited that, and we really struggled to get lots of parents to follow it. Um, at that time the school didn't have their own Facebook page, but then the school decided to start one, so when they did, I felt it was best to post all of our PTA stuff on there, and we stopped using a separate um Facebook page for the PTA. I thought that parents already have so much to keep track of that it was better to add more information to an existing place rather than try and introduce another page for people to keep track of. And I also felt that the PTA was part of bringing the school community together, and so it was more coherent, really, to be part of the school page too. And the other reason was for prospective parents to be able to see that there was an active parent group within the school. I think it would seem welcoming to a new family to see that there were lots of fun things happening that you could get involved with. I mean that would certainly that would certainly attract me as a prospective parent anyway. Um, but of course, my school is very small, as you know, and we have about eight children, and the school isn't doing one Facebook post per day. I think they do try and do a few a week, but it's not possible to do one per day. So we definitely are not fighting for space or attention on the school's Facebook page, and the school is happy for the PTA to post directly without prior approval, so it all works really well for us. So basically, um I ended up being one of the admins on the school Facebook page, so I could just post directly to that page, um, and I didn't have to run anything past our head of school or anything, just to you know, keep it streamlined really, and obviously there's an element of trust there, um, um, but we were already working well together, so it was okay. So we basically used the Facebook page as another advertising tool. We put our posters on there, we put reminders for parents. And we also post on advertising any future events that we've got in the pipeline. And we also mention money that we've raised. That is as far as we take it really. But one really important thing to take into consideration with using social media as a PTA is that it can be extremely time consuming. You have to make frequent posts, otherwise people don't see them. And if your social media is not kept up to date, then people will start to look elsewhere for that information and you're kind of all back to square one. So as I mentioned earlier, that's why it might work really well to have a dedicated person or two people perhaps looking after social media on its own. So basically, you know you've got it covered and you can have confidence in that really. I did have a brief look online to see if there were any particular tips on using Facebook or social media for PTAs, and I found a couple of really useful articles on a website called PTA Plus, which I've mentioned before, and I'm going to put links to those particular articles in the notes of this episode so that you can have a read as well. The first article I found is called Get Your PTA on Facebook, and it's got some great practical tips on how to make the most of your PTA's Facebook page, including whether it needs to be a group or a page, which I never understand on Facebook at all. You can schedule posts to come out at certain times on Facebook, which might help to reduce the admin burden, but you may need to be prepared to react and respond to comments on your posts in a timely manner, so this is where it can get quite time consuming. You might like to consider rules and policies for the page, covering messages, but also photos when you put photos on. Some people obviously want to put photos on of PCA events that have happened. So you need to definitely think very, very carefully about safeguarding. And it's highly recommended that you liaise closely with your school about that and probably reflect their policies too. Rather than just going down your own route and putting photos of children on, perhaps without permission. So yeah, definitely check with your school about that. Even if your Facebook page is separate to the schools, definitely check with the school. So our Facebook page and our posts have been relatively trouble-free. Um probably because we're part of the school's page, so we haven't had any parents saying anything negative or uh making silly comments or anything like that. Um we did have one instance of ticket scammers on one event. So I was advertising some raffle tickets for sale. We had a we managed to um get some tickets for a Coldplay concert donated, and we decided to raffle them off. And we had loads of scammers putting messages on all of my ads saying that they had tickets for sale, as they couldn't attend the concert anymore, blah blah blah. And we had to delete loads of them. So if you have put a post on Facebook, you do need to be on your toes a little bit, um, especially if your posts mention the keyword like tickets. Um, the PTA Plus website has an article about how to avoid online scammers on Facebook and is well worth read. So even if you've already got a Facebook page and you've had that for a while, I would definitely read that because you know these scammers changing all the time, aren't they? It's really hard to keep track of them. Um, but yes, even if you schedule your posts on Facebook so you're not posting on it all the time yourself and they go on automatically, you do need to keep track of any comments that might appear. And the third article that I'm going to link to is called Social Media Do's and Don'ts. And there's a ton of information and really useful tips there. So do have a read through and share with whoever on your team does the social media. The next uh type of communication that we rely quite heavily on as a PTA is WhatsApp. So I'm lucky because my school has a parents' WhatsApp group which has most parents on it, and because we're a small school, it's a group for the whole school, so all the classes are involved. It's just for parents, there's no school staff on it at all, and it's pretty much a self-policing group. Nobody airs any grievances on it or complaints about the school, and it's definitely more of an information sharing group, so it's a perfect place for my PTA to post little reminders, links, and posters. And parents can also then ask questions directly and we can respond quickly, so it works very well. Our WhatsApp group, um, as I said, is a whole school one, but your school, if it's bigger, may have special year group ones or class ones that you might be able to use. So you may want to check with um the school if they know about that, or or try and find out within your parent community, um, and it would be another great tool in your advertising toolbox if you can also put things in the uh class WhatsApp groups or the year WhatsApp groups as well. So I would recommend trying to find out about those. So the three things I've just mentioned, which are WhatsApp, Facebook, and school emails, are the main ways that my PTA communicates with our parents. And the way I approach that was to basically cycle round those three different types in the build-up to an event or during an event. So I usually sent out the detailed information first in an email, uh, which meant that if necessary, I could always refer back to that email if people needed more details. So that email would be sent by the school to all parents. Then I would follow up a couple of days later with a Facebook post, then a reminder on WhatsApp, perhaps a day later, and then go back to sending out another update on email, which I know would capture all the parents. And then basically, I just repeated that cycle as much as I needed to. And I also tried not to present exactly the same message each time, but would instead change the focus of the message so it was a bit different, it wasn't too repetitive for people to read, and perhaps it would showcase different parts of information about the event or something. Um I tried to keep it all very light-hearted and fun, and tried to use phrases to encourage people to take action and basically um do what we wanted them to do. And that was time consuming and definitely meant it was always on my mind at those times to make sure I kept on the ball with it. So when I talk about it being time consuming, it it really is. If you having to put multiple messages out in multiple different ways, that requires quite a lot of brain power and a lot of reminders to do it and not to forget. But in addition to those electronic communications, we also tried some physical or as I like to call them real-world messages, which I think work really effectively and can make a refreshing change from all the virtual stuff that we always have, don't we? So we had three methods for this real-world communication. Uh, the first was to use an assembly to explain a forthcoming event to the children. So I mentioned this before my podcast, um, so you you might have already heard me talk about it. We organised a colour run, which I talk about in episode 14. Um, and it's also mentioned in my episode called The Event That All Went Wrong, because this was the event that all went wrong. Um, and my head of school suggested that two of us came in to an assembly and explain to the children what a colour run was, because my school's never done it before, and a lot of the children would never have heard about it. Uh, so we did that, and uh it went down a storm. We had so many questions from excited children, and they went away talking about it with their friends, and probably went home and talked about it with their families too. And that's when I realised that speaking directly to the children was really valuable. And if you have an event or activity that is designed to involve or appeal to the children specifically, then this is one of the best methods to try if you can. Um, it was so successful that now our head of school often mentions our PTA events and assemblies for us. So we don't always have to go in and talk to the children because obviously that's during the day, not everybody can take time to go into the school during the day. So our head of school is happy to promote our events to the children for us, which is really helpful. Um, but another way you could try to do this is to ask if the class teachers would be willing to promote and explain your event to their class. Um, perhaps if you're in a bigger school and your children don't all come together at assembly, um, then this is another way that you could you could appeal to the children if you like. So that's one of the ways that you can get right to the audience that you're trying to reach is to talk directly to the children. The second thing we do, which is another physical method, is to put up posters around the school, which might seem really old-fashioned, but it's really effective. So we stick them on doors, on walls, and we try and put them at child level so the children can see them. And this also helps to get the children excited and talking about it, and you know, being curious and thinking, oh, what's this? A new poster, what's this about? And if it happens to be a school event uh or a parents' evening where parents are coming into the school, then the parents will also see it, and it will be the same as the poster that they were emailed, so they can make a little connection there, hopefully. And the final thing, which I also tried to do, was to put a physical sign in our playground where the parents stand for drop-off and pickup. So I made it myself because buying a standalone sign, like a pavement sign, it's really expensive, and we don't have money for that kind of thing. So I foraged foraged in my garage, found a piece of wood, um, I painted it with some chalkboard paint, which I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to have a go at making my own chalkboard with this chalkboard paint. I see it on the telly all the time. Finally, I got to try it out, and it was really good. It was so easy. I did quite a few coats to make sure it was nice and thick. Um, and then I put reminder messages on it using my children's chalk supplies, and I just propped it up somewhere in the playground where parents would see it. I also didn't put it in the same place. Every time I put it out the playground, I moved it around the playground. Uh, because sometimes people would stand in front of it, which was really annoying. That really annoyed me. So I did move it around. So I don't know if it's the same at your school, but at my school, and we have a quite a small area where the parents all stand to wait for their kids, but um the parents always stand in the same place, like everybody knows where everybody else stands. It's really bizarre, it's like some sort of weird kind of territorial thing that people stand in their groups or in their allocated spaces. Anyway, so yeah, I decided to put it in a slightly different place each time so that different groups of parents could see it, and also you know, when something's there all the time, you just get used to it, don't you? It just becomes like a fixture of the background scenery. So if you changed its location all the time, it's like a new item is there, and so you have to look at it because it's new and different. Uh, there was one downside with my chalkboard sign though, and that was if it rained, it completely wiped all my message off the chalkboard. Um, for some reason I hadn't thought that that would happen. So the first time it happened, so what I would do is I would arrive at school a little bit early, um, put my chalkboard out in the playground that I'd prepared at home, um, and I'd leave it there all day so that when people came to pick up their kids, um, they would see it as well. Because obviously, some people don't do both pick-up and drop-off, maybe they do one or the other. So I wanted to leave it there all day, but unfortunately, one of the days, um, I left it there and then it rained, you know, at lunchtime or something, and then by the time I got back to school, it was completely blank. There's no information on it at all. So after that, I um was a bit more careful when I put the chalkboard out, so I would perhaps check if it was going to rain that day, or um maybe just bring it to pick up or something like that. Anyway, I did a few different things. I'm not sure exactly how effective the sign was, as I obviously used it in conjunction with the other methods, but I did spot people reading it and looking at it, and I think it probably did remind some parents. So I did use it a lot, and I really like my chalkboard because it was so easy to change the message on it. Um, it was fun. I liked it, it was fun writing in chalk, and I drew little pictures on it and everything. So, yeah, love a chalkboard, really easy to make and um extremely flexible. I would say extremely flexible to the messages that you can put on it. So, thinking back uh over all those methods, I've now realized that for some events I used six or seven different types of communication. Gosh, I can't believe it. Uh so we used school emails, school newsletter, Facebook, WhatsApp, talking to the children, posters and a sign in the playground. Um, and so apart from talking to the children directly in an assembly and putting up posters, I used the rest of those methods multiple times. So that's like my chalkboard. I would change the message on it, I would move it around the playground. Um, and on WhatsApp we'd share the link, but then we'd also share it in a different way, we'd say different things about it. And that is exactly why organizing your communications can be so time-consuming. And as I've mentioned, why it would work well to have a couple of people in charge to make sure nothing gets uh missed. There's just one other thing that I wanted to mention while we're talking about communications, and that is to think about how you're communicating within your PTA team. When I heard one of my PTA team say that they didn't know that we'd provided money for a particular activity, I was really shocked as I thought that my PTA had quite good communication. But that comment did make me wonder if we could improve our comms and how we could do that. Um my PTA comms consist mostly of our PTA WhatsApp group and terminally committee meetings. And to be honest, uh this might not be a popular opinion, but my opinion is that if you come to those meetings and participated in the WhatsApp discussions, then really you should be up to date with whatever the PTA is doing. And I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can do lots of comments, uh lots of communications to people, but people also do have a responsibility to keep themselves informed. For example, by reading the school newsletter or reading the minutes of a meeting. And if you've done all you can to get your message out there in a variety of formats, and someone says that they still didn't know about it, then I do believe really the onus is on them to perhaps take part in school life a bit more or take part in the PTA a bit more. Um it doesn't take much effort or time, as usually all the information they need is right there. You know, a lot of the information is just given to you on a plate. All you have to do is read it and absorb it and maybe make a note in your diary or something like that. It's so easy. But as a PTA, you can't control other people's behaviour, as you know, I'm sure. You can only do your best uh to communicate your events and activities and hope you reach the right channels. And I think we need to stop berating ourselves for when people say they've never heard of an event or an activity and wanted to take part. It's okay. Um, we've done all we can, and um you know, we're only humans, we can't we can't physically go around to their house and talk to them about it. We've done everything we can and um can be satisfied with that really. And I do think using a variety of methods and sending multiple messages will get you there. It will work. Uh, you just have to put the time and effort in, really. There's no shortcuts, unfortunately. So there you go. So that was a summary of how my PTA handles communications with parents. I have actually surprised myself by counting seven different ways that we use, and I had no idea it was that many. No wonder it felt like a huge job every time. Um, I'd be really interested to hear what your experience has been in communications with your parents. How do you do it? Do you have any more ideas to add to my list? Um what do you think is the most effective method? Oh, and do you use Instagram? Could you let me know what that's like and whether you have any tips for Eevee? I would love to share your views on my podcast. So do email me and let me know. It's hello at PTAPodcast.com. And I have a favour to ask you actually, if you like listening to my podcast, please could you share it with someone else who is part of a PTA. It would be great to get some more listeners. So if you know of anyone who might like it, feel free to send them the link. Thank you very much. And basically that's all for me this week. I hope you have a great start to the term, and I look forward to talking with you next time. Bye for now.